LONGEVITY RECORD.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVII, Issue 4996, 5 July 1926, Page 1

LONGEVITY RECORD.

LIVED TILL HE WAS 207. To achieve a century is regarded as to have, reached very near the limit of human longevity, although now and then one hears of people reaching a few years beyofad that span. What is the record, attested by good evidence ?

In the pa.rish df Shoreditch, London, there is what must either be the record or a strange and unaccountable error on somebody’s part. For that ancient register tells us that one Thomas Carn passed awiay on January 28, 1898, at the -age of 207 years. This, man, then, lived under 11 kings and queers.

More astonishing is the attested record of John and Sarah Rovin. They were married one hundred and fortyseven years—surely a record. John died at the ripe age of 164, his wife, Sa.rah, at 172. Their longevity they passed on to their children, one son attaining to 116 years. Another remarkable case was that of John Effingham, a Cornwall labourer who had been at work since his early childhood. He lived to be 144. He declared that until he h,ad p'assed his hundredth birthday he had never had a, day in bed. He was a vegetarian and teetotaller. Like Dr. William Mead, df Wa,re, he attributed his long life to abstemiousness. Dr. Mead believed in industry and moderation in all things.

A centenarian who worked as a fisherman, suffering exposure at a hundred years of age to 'a-11 sort,? of weather, is; recorded from- Yorkshire. This man, Henry Jenkins, lived to be 169.

The case of Peter Garden, of Aberdeenshire, is equally remarkable. He not only attained to an amazing old age, but kept his bodily health and faculties. When he .was 120 he laboured in the fields alongside his son. It wa.s said that he looked the younger of the two men. He died at 131. Here is the recipe for long life passed on by Thomas Parr, bom in 1583 in Atherbury and who died a,t 1'52. You may see his monument in Westminster Abbey. He said : “Keep your head cool by temperance, your fee.t warm by exercise, rise early and go soon to bed, and if you are inclined to get fat, keep your eyes open and your mouth shut —that is, be moderate in your sleep and diet.’’

There was also a Countess of Desmond who reached 140. Lord Bacon vouches for her case, and mentions her in his “Na.tural History,” saying: “She did dehuture twice or thrice,, casting her old teeth, the others coming in their nlace.”