CENTENARIANS EXAMINED

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 83, 10 April 1939, Page 3

CENTENARIANS EXAMINED

Dr. Maurice Ernest has long been known as the world's greatest sceptic or the matter of centenarians, though he is himself the founder of the Centenarians' Club; and in his long-ex-pected study of the subject he "debunks" almost every famous long-liver, says the "Manchester Guardian." The dearly-cherished legend of the Countess of Desmond's climbing a cherry tree at something over 120 years of age is; it seems, just a tall story without any reliable evidence to back it. The fascinating tale of Henry Jenkins, who, at th ■ age of 162, remembered being sent to Northallerton with a horseload of arrows for Flodden Field, remains a tale, in spite of the wealth of corroborative detail. . That "old, old. very bid man. Thomas Parr," was not such a- very old man after all, though it is just possible he might have been admitted to the Centenarians' Club, if there had been one in his time. But the greatest disappointment of all is the Turk Zaro Agha, who, only a few years ago, was written up in virtually every newspaper in tha world as anything from 130 to 165 years of age. Dr. Ernest is of the opinion that he was a rank impostor, who seemed to the trained medical eye to be about 70, or at most 80, years old. He will not admit to any authenticated centenarian over the age of 113, which is rather surprising in view of the fact that for the five years ending 1927 England and Wales alone rernrded 439 deaths of people over 100.