Margaret Ann Harvey Neve – 110 Years Old in 1903. The First Documented Female Supercentenarian

Margaret Ann Harvey was born on 18 May 1792 in St Peter Port, which is the capital city of Guernsey, the second-largest of the Channel Islands; and died there on 4 April 1903 at the reported age of 110. In this contribution, her exceptional age is thoroughly validated. Considering the data collected on her parents and siblings, there is no possibility of an erroneous linkage, as the name of Margaret and Ann appears only once in the birth records, her family’s birth intervals were narrow, and the dates of death of her siblings have been checked. As she did not have children, her name was not found in civil registration records after her marriage in 1823 until her death in 1903. This lack of records might have made it difficult to prove that the person who died at age 110 in 1903 was the same person who married in 1823 at age 30. Fortunately, she was enumerated in six successive censuses from 1851 to 1901, and a comparison of the ages reported in these censuses and her exact ages shows only minor deviations. Moreover, numerous letters and her numerous diaries help us to follow her life during that long period. Upon reaching age 100, she became famous in Guernsey. Thus, there are many photos of her and press articles about her life. These data support the reliability of the reported chronology of her life events, and thus allow us to validate this exceptional case. Accordingly, we can state that Margaret Ann Harvey Neve is the first documented female supercentenarian. As in the case of recently deceased supercentenarian Emma Morano, her life spanned three successive centuries – albeit one century earlier.

Supercentenarians and Semi-supercentenarians in France

The purpose of this study is twofold. Firstly, it attempts to exhaustively identify cases of French supercentenarians and semi-supercentenarians and to validate their alleged age at death. Secondly, it seeks to uncover careful patterns and trends in probabilities of death and life expectancy at very old ages in France. We use three sets of data with varying degrees of accuracy and coverage: nominative transcripts from the RNIPP (Répertoire national d’identification des personnes physiques), death records from the vital statistics system, and “public” lists of individual supercentenarians. The RNIPP stands out as the most reliable source. Based on all deaths registered in the RNIPP at the alleged ages of 110+ for extinct cohorts born between 1883 and 1901, errors are only few, at least for individuals who were born and died in France. For alleged semi-supercentenarians, age validation on a very large sample shows that errors are extremely rare, suggesting the RNIPP data can be used without any verification until age 108 at the minimum. Moreover, a comparison with “public” lists of individual supercentenarians reveals a single missing occurrence only in the RNIPP transcripts since 1991. While the quality of vital statistics data remains quite deficient at very old ages compared to RNIPP, the analytical results show a significant improvement over time at younger old ages. Our RNIPP-based probabilities of death for females appear to level-off at 0.5 between ages 108 and 111, but data becomes too scarce afterwards to assess the trend. Also, we obtain a quite low life expectancy value of 1.2 years at age 108.

The International Database on Longevity: Data Resource Profile

Even in countries with very good statistical systems, routine population statistics that cover individuals of very high ages are often problematic, as the proportion of erroneous cases increases sharply with age. The desire to measure human mortality at extreme ages was the main motivation for the establishment of the International Database on Longevity (IDL). The IDL is a uniquely valuable source of information on extreme human longevity. It provides high-quality age-validated individual-level data on the ages of semi-supercentenarians and supercentenarians. Moreover, the IDL is the only database that provides such data without age-ascertainment bias. It obtains its candidates from records of government agencies to ensure that there is no dependency between the probability of being included and age. Candidates who meet strict criteria for the validity of their age (date of their birth) are then included in the IDL. Nevertheless, the IDL does not include exhaustive sets of validated supercentenarians and semi-supercentenarians for any country, because it is nearly impossible to find documents that would allow for the validation of the ages of all of the individuals on the list. As of August 2017, the IDL has records on 1,304 validated supercentenarians and 18,590 semi-supercentenarians from 15 countries. The first person in the IDL collection who attained age 110 was born in 1852 and died in 1962 in Quebec, while the last person was born in 1906 and attained age 110 in 2016. This chapter introduces the database and explains its purpose and principles. We also describe the data structure and provide an overview of the information available.

Geert Adriaans Boomgaard, the First Supercentenarian in History?

This contribution presents the validation of the age at death of Geert Adriaans BOOMGAARD (GAB), a seaman who reached the age of 110. He was born in Groningen on 21 September 1788 and died in the same city on 3 February 1899. A remarkable number of documents have been found that cover the full span of GAB’s life, and thus make it possible to validate his reported exceptional age. In the first step of the validation, a comparison of the baptism and death records shows that the information provided is consistent, even if the spelling of the surnames of his parents reported in the two records is not identical. The reconstitution of GAB’s family and the dates of birth of his siblings also support the validity of GAB’s reported age at death. The demographic information covers the period between 1818 (the year of his first marriage) and 1837 (the year of birth of his last child). We found few documents that mention him during his early life before his first marriage, including a document from 1791 indicating that his father named his new boat De Jonge Geert as well as a list of conscripts from 1811 where his name appeared. By contrast, we found numerous documents covering the period from 1837 to 1899 that are related to his career as a seaman; the marriages of children; his entry into a nursing home; and various interviews, photos, and articles on his life that appeared in the press. All of these documents support the validity of GAB’s reported year of birth and age at death. Thus, GAB might be considered the first thoroughly validated supercentenarian in the history of humankind.

Preface

The advance of the frontier of survival is documented, verified, and brought to life in this monograph.

Causes of Death Among 9000 Danish Centenarians and Semisuper-Centenarians in the 1970–2012 Period

As most centenarians suffer from multiple diseases, they are at high risk of dying – but what do they ultimately die of? This question has scarcely been examined. We have carried out a register-based study of the causes of death (CoD) among Danish centenarians. Among 8559 centenarian deaths in the 1970–2012 period, the most common CoD was in the category of cardio- and cerebrovascular diseases (CVD); at the end of the study period, this CoD accounted for one-third of the deaths in this age group. The mortality rate for CVD as an underlying CoD was more than halved during the period (from 358 to 170 per 1000 person-years). In contrast, the mortality rate for cancer remained stable during the whole period, but at a very low level (15–20 per 1000 person-years). Cancer made up a much smaller share of underlying CoDs among this age group (3–4%) than among 85–99-year-olds (15%). The mortality rate for pneumonia remained at a constant level (about 50 per 1000 person-years) of around 10% among centenarians and 5% among 85–99-year-olds. The underlying CoD groups that were reported with increasing frequency during the period were mental diseases, including dementia, which increased sevenfold; and ill-defined conditions/senility, which increased fourfold. The latter CoD group accounted for 28% of deaths among centenarians in the most recent years, and for more than one-third of deaths among semi-supercentenarians (aged 105–109). The increase in the proportion of deaths for which the CoD was listed as ill-defined conditions/senility was probably partly due to the under-diagnosis of diseases among centenarians, especially of heart diseases. However, a substantial proportion of these deaths may have been attributable to “old age” – i.e., a combination of several diseases and organ deficiencies – and not to a single underlying cause.

Mortality of Supercentenarians: Estimates from the Updated IDL

Mortality after age 110 has been estimated to be flat at a level corresponding to an annual probability of death of 50% (Gampe, Supercentenarians. Springer, Berlin, 2010). Since the publication of these results, the IDL has been substantially updated, and the number of supercentenarians in the database has roughly doubled. Here we report the results obtained from the updated database (N = 1219 supercentenarians). The broad conclusions regarding human mortality at the highest ages still hold.

Age 115+ in the USA: An Update

In a companion chapter on this topic in the earlier Supercentenarians book (Young,“Age 115 or More in the United States: Fact or Fiction", Supercentenarians. Springer Verlag, Berlin, 2010), validation information on eight Americans who survived to age 115 (as well as five claims to 115+ that were invalidated) was presented. This follow-up chapter presents the validation of another 10 Americans who either reached age 115+ since then or were subsequently validated: Augusta Holtz (115), Edna Parker (115), Gertrude Baines (115), Besse Cooper (116), Dina Manfredini (115), Gertrude Weaver (116), Jeralean Talley (116), Susannah Jones (116), Bernice Madigan (115), and Antonia Gerena Rivera (115). Also, an early Social Security Administration (hereafter SSA) study (Kestenbaum, Ferguson, Supercentenarians. Springer Verlag, Berlin, 2010) 115+ case, Lucy Hannah, has been invalidated.

Validation of 113-Year Old Israel Kristal as the World’s Oldest Man

This book chapter provides a detailed description of the discovery, research, and validation of the case of Mr. Israel Kristal of Israel, 113, as the World’s Oldest Man titleholder for Guinness World Records. In this chapter, we show how modern scientific age validation criteria were applied to prove the credibility of the claims made about Mr. Kristal’s age. Due to the hardships Mr. Kristal faced in his early life, validating his age proved to be extremely difficult. While the first attempts to validate Mr. Kristal’s age were made in early 2014, a breakthrough in these investigative efforts did not occur until January 2016. To validate his age, the Gerontology Research Group contacted not only Mr. Kristal’s family, but also international institutions specializing in genealogical research. A special note of appreciation should go to the Jewish Records Indexing in Poland for their contributions to this investigation. As a result of this international cooperation, sufficient early-life, middle-life, and late-life evidence was obtained to meet modern validation standards. Israel Kristal was finally recognized as the oldest living man in the world on Mar. 11, 2016 (retroactive to Jan. 19, 2016). Israel Kristal is the second validated supercentenarian in the history of Israel, after Dr. Maria Pogonowska (1897–2009), who was also born in Poland. In addition, he is the current longevity record-holder of Israel.

Causes of Death at Very Old Ages, Including for Supercentenarians

The causes of death reported on the death certificates of the oldest old are generally seen as unreliable, and as thus providing little useful information on the process leading to death. However, in advanced countries, a majority of the people who die each year are relatively old, and the level of detail provided on medical certificates about the causes of death among this older population is improving. At the same time, scholars are becoming increasingly interested in studying not just the initial cause of death, but multiple causes of death, thereby taking all of the information reported on the certificate into account. This study demonstrates that in a country like France, the cause-of-death pattern evolves regularly until around age 105. The share of people dying of circulatory diseases tends to be quite stable over the age range, while the share of individuals dying of cancer is declining, and the share of people dying of respiratory/infectious diseases is rising. Furthermore, among people who die at very old ages, a typology of multiple causes of death highlights the growing importance of ill-defined causes, while opening the door to an interesting discussion about the concept of cause of death in the supercentenarian population. Instead of representing an ill-defined cause, senility could be considered an actual cause of death. This suggests that daily care is more crucial to the survival of the oldest old than any conventional medical care or treatment. Supercentenarians tend to be so frail that any minor health event or brief lapse of attention on the part of their caregivers can be lethal.