Betsy Baker

As of January 2015[update], the Gerontology Research Group (GRG) had validated the longevity claims of 154 British citizens who have become "supercentenarians", attaining or surpassing 110 years of age. This number including 23 emigrants who died in other nations. The oldest known British person ever is Charlotte Hughes, who died in 1993 at the age of 115 years and 228 days. The oldest man ever from the United Kingdom is Henry Allingham, who died in 2009 at the age of 113 years and 42 days. As of 19 April 2024, the oldest person living in the United Kingdom is Ethel Caterham, born 21 August 1909, aged 114 years, 242 days.

Deceased Living

Betsy Ann Baker (née Russell; born August 20, 1842 – October 24, 1955) was born in Great Brington, Northamptonshire in England, immigrated to the United States, settled in Nebraska, and became the world's oldest person.[33] She lived for 65 years in Johnson County, where she was called "the Queen mother of the Johnson County Fair" in 1953. At age 107, she received a congratulatory letter from president Harry S. Truman. On her 112th birthday, she was featured in the US Army magazine Stars and Stripes.[33] She died in Tecumseh, aged 113 years and 65 days.[33]

Baker was the first supercentenarian listed by Guinness World Records as the world's oldest person.[33] In 2002, researchers confirmed that she had been the world's oldest living person by modern verification standards.[33][34] Baker would hold the title of world's oldest living person from Nancy Merriman's death on 14 January 1954[35] until her own death in 1955. She was the second well-documented person in the world to have reached the age of 113, after Delina Filkins.[34]

Lucy Jane Askew (8 September 1883 – 9 December 1997) was the oldest person in Europe at the time of her death, aged 114 years and 92 days. She was born in Loughton, Essex, to Arthur George Askew and Susan Elizabeth Askew née Ellis. Her parents were prosperous cartage contractors, cab proprietors, and landowners. She had five siblings, of whom three also lived past 100. Askew lived all her life in Loughton, and never married. She was a devout Christian, attending the Loughton Union Church. She moved into a nursing home at 106 and survived a leg operation at 108. She remained in good health and died peacefully in her sleep. She attributed her longevity to a modest lifestyle.[36][37]

Eva Morris (née Sharpe; 8 November 1885 – 2 November 2000) was the world's oldest living person at the time of her death. She was born in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire and became a domestic worker. She married, but was widowed in the 1930s. Her only child, Winnie, died of cancer in 1975, aged 62. Morris lived independently in her own flat until she was 107, but after suffering from a chest infection, she moved to a care home in Stone, where she resided at the time of her death. She was deaf and visually impaired in her final years, and reportedly had put her longevity down to work, exercise, whisky and boiled onions.[38] She became the oldest living person upon the death of 119-year-old Sarah Knauss on 30 December 1999. She died just six days before her 115th birthday,[39] and remains the third-oldest British person ever.

Edith 'Judy' Ingamells (née Gude; 12 January 1894 – 1 March 2006)[40] was the oldest person in the United Kingdom from December 2005 to March 2006.[41] She was born in Maidenhead, Berkshire, to George and Harriet Gude. According to census documents, George worked as a photographer in 1901 and a public caterer in 1911. She moved to Enfield, Middlesex, at the beginning of the First World War in 1914, and married Percy Ingamells, a wholesale florist.[42] They had three daughters, born between 1915 and 1925. Ingamells lived in other areas around England, and worked as a milliner before settling back in Enfield in 1990.

Her daughter, Patricia Bull, said, at the time of Ingemells' 111th birthday, that the secret of her longevity was to "never look back, always look forward, which she is certainly doing".[43]

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