KEEPING YOUNG AT 100.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVIII, Issue 221, 16 August 1928, Page 11

KEEPING YOUNG AT 100.

PLAYED TENNIS WITH GLAD-

STONE

Widow of a former’ M.P. for Stockport; Mrs Frederick Pennington has celebrated her 100th birthday in London, and lias been congratulated by the King. Despite her great ago Mrs Pennington is not old. Apart from a slight deafness, she retains t-Q the full all lier faculties, and still plays bridge, carves and serves at table, reads-three newspapers daily, does not wear spectacles, and rides in an open car. ■ Her husband, who was a Liberal M.P. for several years prior to his retirement in 1889, had reached the age of 5)4, when he died in 1914. Mrs Pennington proudly claims 477 direct descendants. And she always keeps “open table” at her delightful homo in Hydo Park Terrace. Age is no excuse for idleness is one of Mrs Pennington’s mottoes. She rises for breakfast at 8.30 a.m., and after lier meal interests herself in the affairs of tho household, over which she maintains sole control. Her servants receive instructions from their mistress only. An indefatigable knitter, Mrs Pennington’s output in this direction is phenomenal. Mrs Pennington, who was the youngest of 14 children of Rev. John Sharpe vicar of Doncaster and canon of York, entered politics early in life, and claimed friendship with Gladstone, Cobden, Bright and other leaders of the Liberal Party. Her father was a Conservative, and one of Mrs Pennington’s earliest recollections is a visit of Disraeli to the homo of her childhood. Yet one of her happiest memories is an “experimental” game of tennis with Mr Gladstone in 1866! It is believed that it was r,t her home near Dorking that Mr Gladstone first saw lawn tennis played. In her early days Mrs Pennington was associated with the suffrago movement, which was then in its infancy, and she still watches the progress of women with the same interest. Mrs Pennington is too broad-minded to condemn the “modern” girl. “There has always been a modern girl,” she says.