100 YEARS OLD YESTERDAY

Press, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23100, 16 August 1940, Page 10

100 YEARS OLD YESTERDAY

KING’S TELEGRAM TO MRS M. O’DONOGHUE

A telegram of congratulation from the King, sent from Buckingham Palace, was received by Mrs Mary O’Donoghue, of 472 Gloucester street, as she was celebrating her hundredth birthday yesterday.. Relatives and friends attended a birthday party in her honour, for which a cake was decorated with 100 candles. Mrs O’Donoghue was born in County Waterford, Ireland, and spent the first 17 years of her life in a convent. Between 1860 iand 1868 she served as a stewardess on a ship trading between Britain and Nqw Zealand, and was a witness of incidents in the Maori Wars. She settled in Brisbane for two years and then returned to Ireland. Her travels were not over, however, for a few years later she went to the United States, where she nursed in a mental hospital in Ohio. Another

journey to Australia followed.. In Queensland again, Mrs O’Donoghue experienced the; difficulties and dangers of the early colonists - there. During that time she saved her husband ’ by killing a snake which was about to attack him. In the seventies Mrs O’Donoghue came to New Zealand, and for the last 60 years she has lived in . the Dominion a full and energetic life, if less adventurous than her earlier career. Only six years ago she dug a quarteracre garden and planted it herself. She comesof a family notable for long lives—her father died in his one hundred and fifth year.