Woman Aged 100 Today

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32253, 23 March 1970, Page 2

Woman Aged 100 Today

“I don’t live in the past; there is so much to do in the present.” The speaker was Mrs Mary Gosset, of Sumner, a woman with a ready retort and a strong will, who is 100 years old today. At home yesterday, Mrs Gosset graciously welcomed a reporter and photographer. She presented the reporter with some neatly-written biographical details she had prepared, and proceeded to inspect the photographer’s camera. “Are you a good photographer?” she wanted to know. “Do you have a tripod for that?” A keen photographer herself, before her marriage, Mrs Gosset had photographs of animals on her father’s farm published in the “Weekly Press.” She brought out an album displaying her work, and explained how she had used a camera with plates. “I could set it up all right, but when it came to shooting my heart used to thud,” she said. “They take pictures so quickly now, but I don’t think they do them any better.” Mrs Gosset, who could easily pass for 20 years younger than she is, had a long discussion with the photographer about the quality of photographs reproduced on newsprint. Occasionally during the interview she would stop to listen to, or proudly observe the activities of her two grandchildren—George, aged 31, and Annabel, aged two. They are the children of her only living son, Dr H. J. Gosset. The second in a family of eight, Mrs Gosset was born at Doyleston, where her father, Mr John Rennie, farmed. Her mother died when she was 14, and the youngest child 18 months of age. “I was the oldest girl, so had to help my father with the family. We did the usual things children do—riding, working, gathering birds’ eggs, and climbing trees. We walked to school at Doyleston and, later, rode on horseback to Leeston,” said Mrs Gosset. “We played games on our own fields—tennis, hockey, football for the four boys—and we danced. We girls used to play the piano and sing at church and school concerts, and we had to cook and sew. There was no Ernest Adams then.” Married in 1902 to the late

Dr G. Gosset, she lived at Leeston until 1908, when she went to England with her husband. “That was when the Suffragettes were fighting *or the right to vote. I remember telling one of them—it was one of the Pankhursts—that women in New Zealand already had the vote. Then one of the men dragged me away in case I got involved.” Mrs Gosset was about 23 when she got the vote, and has always voted since, including in last year’s General Election, when she was 99. Many years later she made a second visit to Britain with her husband, and has always been interested in travel. She still reads travel books and biographies, and is a life member of the Canterbury Travel Club and of the Canterbury Public Library. Despite failing eyesight, Mrs Gosset reads the daily newspaper “from cover to cover” and occasionally watches television. She looks after herself in the home she moved to with her husband at 132 Nayland Street, Sumner, in 1931. Smartly dressed in a blue coat-dress, trimmed with cream lace, and a blue hat, Mrs Gosset scarcely sat down for long, but moved about nimbly, her back always erect. She was quite prepared to discuss topical events, and proved very well informed. She expressed concern that New Zealand, “a good little country to live in,” would be “swallowed up” by Japan and Australia. “All these people striking here is no good. People used to work and enjoy their work. Now they only work for the pay, and always want more of that. “Just working,” she said, was what had kept her going. “I worked from the time I was bom.” And that was the only explanation she had to offer for her longevity.