ARE CENTENARIANS LIARS?

Evening Star, Issue 22723, 10 August 1937, Page 11

ARE CENTENARIANS LIARS?

Dr Maurice Ernest, founder of the Centenarians’ Club, will find a great many people who are unwilling to accept his statement about the claims of super-centenarians, declares a correspondent of the ‘ Manchester Guardian.’ Dr Ernest maintains that “ after prolonged research I am satisfied that the greatest age to which there is reliable evidence that any human being has lived is 113.” When one thinks of the number of picturesque individuals whom this statement brands as merely liars the mind revolts and will have none of it. Is there nothing but fable in the tales of Zaro Agha’s 11 wives and three sets of real teeth P Does not the very phrase “ that old, old, very old man, Thomas Parr ” carry conviction as to his 152 years? Do we want to discredit Li Shung-yun, of Kaihsien, when ho insists that he was born in 1080. is now living with his twentyfourth wife, and “ loves to gossip of his experiences in the eighteenth century ” ? Then there was Henry Jenkins, about whom there exists such convincing corroborative detail. Was Mrs Ann Savillo merely romancing when s’he wrote to George I.’s physician : ' “ Being in my sister’s kitchen at Bolton, Henry Jenkins came in to beg. and I desired him to tell me how old he was. He. said, after a pause, that ho was about 162 or 163. I asked him what kings he remembered. He said 1 Henry VIII.’ I asked him what public event he could longest remember. He said; ‘ Flodden Field ’ I asked what age ho might bo then. He said between 10 and 12, ‘ for,’ says he, ‘ I was sent to Northallerton with a horse-load of arrows, but they sent a bigger boy from thence to the army with them.’ ” -

Another Jenkins story is told by a solicitor who engaged the old man as a witness in a right-of-way case. When the man of law called on Jenkins at his cottage in Bolton ho saw what he took to he the old gentleman himself taking the sun in the front gai'den. But- this youth informed him that “ Feythcr” was inside. Opening the front door, the solicitor explained his errand to a very decrepit individual sitting by a rousing lire, although the day was warm. He had to repeat his statement as the man was deaf, but when he had made himself understood ho was amazed to be directed _to “ t’back,” where he found the object of his search busily engaged preparing logs for the fire and quite plainly the most active member of the family.

Dr Maurice Ernest may convince our heads of the snurious character of all these talcs, declares this aggrieved correspondent, but in our hearts we shall go on believing them. Anyhow, surely 113 is putting the figure top low.