Elizabeth Eliza Curtis is not 105

[SueMay]

Well, if my research is correct, I don't think she was.
This is what I found and would be interested to hear what others think:

Elizabeth Eliza Curtis
1911 census – Margate St John the Baptist, Kent.
Age: 95 (1816), Born: Faversham, Kent

At the moment I haven’t been able to find her on the 1901 census record but I am assuming this is around the time her husband died.

Based on the information of her being born in Faversham, Kent, this is who I think she is…

1891 census – Cheshunt, Edmonton, Hertfordshire
Age: 69 (1822), Born: Waltham Abbey, Essex
Husband: George Curtis, 66 (1825), Gun smith, Cheshunt, Edmonton, Hertfordshire

1881 census – Cheshunt, Edmonton, Hertfordshire
Age: 55 (1826), Born: Faversham, Kent
Husband: George Curtis, 56 (1825), Gun barrel filer, Cheshunt

1871 census – Cheshunt, Edmonton, Hertfordshire
Age: 44 (1825), Born: Faversham, Kent
Husband: George Curtis, 44 (1827), Gunsmith Enfield Factory, Cheshunt

1861 census – Cheshunt, Edmonton, Hertfordshire
Age: 32 (1829), Born: Faversham, Kent
Husband: George Curtis, 36 (1825), Foreman powder making, Cheshunt

1851 census – Waltham Holy Cross, Edmonton, Essex (living with her parents; James O Brian & Mather ???)
Surname: Curtie, Age: 23 (1828), Born: (transcribed as) Teversham, Kent
Husband: George Curtis, 36 (1825), Gun Maker, Cheshunt

Marriage: 8 October 1849, Waltham Holy Cross, Edmonton

Baptism: 18 Dec 1826, Faversham, daughter of James & Martha O’Brien

It does, however, make me wonder why she made herself older. Could it have been to be able to receive a benefit of some sort???

 

[peter]

It does, however, make me wonder why she made herself older. Could it have been to be able to receive a benefit of some sort???

By the time Old Age Pensions came in she was well over the qualification age (70). However if her husband left her a legacy she might have got a better deal on an annuity by claiming to be older.

 

[Stuart]

There are lots of Ancestry trees with her in (47, it says). The top one (McKitterick Family Tree, of GoodmanMary) has the 1841 (name obriant, age 14) and 1901 (age 81, a widow, in Islington as "aunt"). But none of them gets past 1901, nor has her death. That was in 1922, in Thanet - recorded age 106. That got her into the papers, adding odd journalist-friendly factoids like her claim to have nursed (and smacked!) "the late King Edward".

But as to her real age, and - assuming she really was the one born in 1826 - who made her older and why, I can only guess. And, given she died in Kent, could someone have gone to find her baptism record? Maybe it was not that important to anyone, and no so easy to do then either. And of course it doesn't give her age anyway.

The longest report is in the Thanet Advertiser of 18 February 1922 (p5). It records a gift of £5 from Queen Alexandra (the said King Edward's widow), to avoid a pauper's burial, but with no admission of any truth in her stories. Other reports say she retained her mental faculties, but the threshold for saying that about a 106-year-old was probably pretty low. I don't think it precludes her having got confused about her year of birth, and who else would know better by then?