Europe's oldest woman dies aged 114
Europe’s oldest woman has died at the age of 114, it emerged today.
Amy Isabel Hulmes, who spent all of her ‘‘two lifetimes’’ in and around the Greater Manchester town of Bury, passed away on October 27, just weeks after her 114th birthday last month, her family said.
She leaves two daughters, five grandchildren, 15 great-grandchildren and seven great-great-grandchildren.
At her funeral yesterday, grandson Nick Murray said family were told how Mrs Hulmes had ‘‘lived two lifetimes’’ and had spent a ‘‘very long time as an old lady’’.
‘‘She was 69 when my grandfather died so by her generation’s standards she was an old lady then, and she has lived another 45 years since then.’’
The former weaver, who only gave up smoking 30 years ago in case it damaged her health, put her longevity down to drinking a daily draught of Guinness at her local pub.
‘‘It was a very nice do yesterday and we all went to her local afterwards for a pint of Guinness,’’ Mr Murray said.
Mrs Hulmes was declared Europe’s oldest woman - after several months in which it was thought she was the world’s oldest lady - by the Guinness Book of Records earlier this year following the death at 115 of Marie Bremont in France.
Born on Wednesday October 5, 1887, Queen Victoria’s 50th year on the throne, Amy narrowly missed being the only living Briton to see two monarch’s celebrate their Golden Jubilee.
The oldest woman in the world is 114-year-old Maude Farris-Luse, from Michigan, a spokeswoman for Guinness World Records said today.
Investigations have begun to find out who takes Mrs Hulmes’ place as Europe’s oldest living woman, she added.
