CENTENARIAN’S TEA PARTY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 1048, 9 January 1913, Page 4

CENTENARIAN’S TEA PARTY.

HALE AND HEARTY AT 104 YEARS.

Sixteen people, not one of whom was under 70 years of age, ate a slice of iced cake and sipped a cup of “special” tea iu the Tooting Home, when Captain David Jackson, an inmate, celebrated the 104th anniversary of his birthday. Captain Jackson himself was excited by the portentous occasion to eat, but pottered about between the beds of those of his guests who could not rise, and , was yery anxious that his sister Mrs Alice Smith —who is 78 years of age, and is also in the Home—should eat a slice of the birthday cake, With a snow-white beard and hair framing a ruddy face, Jackson is a neat old fellow who has experienced his full share of the vicissitudes of life. He runs his fingers, round his gums to illustrate: their innocence of teeth, but despite their absence he eats well (his weakness is new-laid eggs and fruit), and he smokes a pipe regularly. His mempiy is clear, and his health good, and it is only within the last, year that he has been unable to take: a daily constitutional, Some .months ago he > 1 '

fell and fractured two ribs ; he is so hardy, however, that he has quite recovered from the accident, and he was present at the annual service to seamen in St. Paul’s, whither he went in a taxi-cab.

A WRECKED FORTUNE.

This is a function which he has not missed for some years, for from the age ot nine he followed the sea as an occupation for nearly half a century. Born at North Runtou, near King’s Lynn in 1808, Jackson was apprenticed to the sea, and before he was twenty was a fully qualified captain. He rounded Cape Horn many times. Once he was shipwrecked. By degrees he saved which be invested in a ship, but the vessel foundered on the first voyage after it became his properly. and, penniless, he came to London in iB6O. Here he was employed by a firm of shop-blind manufacturers in Clapham, and at 99 he entered the Wandsworth Workhouse, whence he went to Tooting. He was up at seven o’clock in the morning in preparation for his birthday celebration, ate breakfast, dinner and tea, and did not retire to bed until seven o’clock. At that hour he showed no symptoms of fatigue, and was vigorously explaining to a crony the reason why “no ship’ll ever get round the North Pple.” Another inmate, of poetic tendency, who is 64 years of age, perpetrated a series of verses in honour of the occasion, retailing the incidents of Captain Jackson’s life and concluding:—

“ Well he remembers days of yore, When freely he would roam ; Now he is bound to keep in shore, And rest at Tooting Home.”