Surrey's Ethel Caterham turns 116, oldest living person

A British woman living in a Surrey care home has celebrated what appears to be her 116th birthday, maintaining her status as the oldest living person in the world after a long life spanning most of the 20th century and into the present day. Ethel Caterham, born on August 21, 1909, in Hampshire, turned 116 this week at the Lightwater facility where she has resided for more than five decades. Her care home confirmed that she would mark the day quietly with family, while noting the global attention that comes with her title.

Ethel Caterham’s life reads like a record of modern history. She was the second youngest of eight siblings and grew up in the late Edwardian era, a time when she would later become the last surviving subject of King Edward VII. At 18 she boarded a three-week solo voyage to India to work as an au pair for a British military family, a journey she undertook in 1927, years before women in the UK would gain the vote. Returning to Britain in 1931, she met her future husband, Norman Caterham, at a dinner party; they married in Salisbury Cathedral in 1933. Norman, who rose to lieutenant colonel in the Royal Army Pay Corps, accompanied the family to postings in Hong...