The Biology of Senescence 



TABLE V 



NUMBER AND MAXIMUM AGES OF CENTENARIANS DYING IN ENGLAND AND 



WALES 



(Registrar-General's statistics) 



Year Number and probable maximum age 



Women 

 102 (108) 



91 (108) 

 79 (108) 



92 (106)* 

 85 (105)* 

 71 (106)* 

 94 (108)* 

 97 (108)* 



107 (115) 

 133 (106)* 

 131 (107)* 

 142 (109)* 

 147 (107)* 



* = verifiable by birth certificate. 



mass of the population of Abkhasia is really higher than in the 

 population of Russia' (Tomilin 1938). In America, Nascher's 

 investigation of John Shell, reputed to be 131, showed him to 

 be in fact about 100 years old (Nascher 1920). In England and 

 Wales, the oldest persons dying between 1930 and 1945 appear 

 to have reached ages of 112 and 109 years (Korenchevsky, 

 1947). A woman who died at St. Asaph, Flintshire, in 1948 

 may have reached 115 years, and had certainly reached 111. 

 Sporadic records of supercentenarians such as Old Parr, 

 whose tomb in Westminster Abbey credits him with an age of 

 152 years, whose body was examined by Harvey, and whose 

 complete lack of documentation was exposed by Thorns 

 (1873), occur in almost all cultures: a long series of similar 

 anecdotes is given by Gould and Pyle (1898). The best recent 

 summary of these often-paraded examples is that of R. T. 

 Gould (1945). Though in most cases the stories conform closely 

 to the childhood fantasy of 'going on living for almost always', 

 they may also indicate that authenticated records do not yet 

 represent the extreme of human longevity under all conditions. 

 There is some ground, apart from the absence of critical record 

 in backward countries, to associate extreme individual longevity 



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