117-year-old Violet Mosse Brown is now officially the world’s oldest human being.
She became the world’s oldest person after the previous record holder Emma Morano, from Italy, died last weekend at the grand old age of 117.
Violet, who is from Duanvale, Trelawny in Jamaica, was born in March 1900 and is affectionately known as Aunt V. To put that in perspective, when she was born Queen Victoria was still ruling.
Her place of birth, Duanvale, is a neighbouring district to Sherwood Content, which is the hometown of legendary sprinter Usain Bolt.
Her eldest child Harold Fairweather is 96 and holds the title of ‘world’s oldest living person with a parent also alive’, according to the Jamaican Observer.
According to her official biography Brown ‘is a post-slavery survivor’. In her early years, she worked on a plantation and as a maid before buying her own property to plant and sell sugar cane with her husband.
Caretakers for Mrs. Mosse Brown attribute her long life to:
… fish and mutton and sometimes she will have cow foot, but she does not eat pork or chicken.
She’s also quite fond of sweet potatoes, Irish potatoes, breadfruit, oranges, and mangoes.
Because she was born in 1900 Jamaica was still under British rule, so all her records are from the British government.
The director of LA-based Gerontology Research Group’s Supercentenarian Research and Database Division, Robert Young, told AFP that:
Unless a surprise candidate comes out, she is the oldest living Victorian.
Jamaica’s Prime Minster, Andrew Holness tweeted his congratulations to Violet, saying:
Morano, the previous holder of the world’s oldest living person title, is said to have been the last known survivor of the 19th Century.
She died last Saturday, April 15, at her home in Verbania, northern Italy.
