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From The Times
January 5, 2008

Spinster celebrates her 110th thanks to whisky and onions

Alan Hamilton

She has seen three centuries, six monarchs and twenty-one prime ministers, and was a teenager when the Titanic sank. Today, Minnie Smith celebrates her 110th birthday.

Miss Smith is on her way to being the oldest woman to have lived in Britain, the record having been set by Eva Morris, who died in 2000 six days short of her 115th birthday.

Miss Smith, who is now blind and largely deaf, attributes her longevity to regular consumption of whisky and boiled onions. It may be relevant that she never married or had children. During the Great War she had a crush on an Australian soldier called Noddy, but her mother forbade her to pursue him. To this day a photograph rests on the dressing table at her Salvation Army retirement home in South London.

She is not the oldest living Briton. Henry Allingham, of Eastbourne, is, at 111, the oldest man in Europe and one of two known survivors in Britain of the Battle of the Somme.

One of Miss Smith’s nieces, Josepha Strange, 85, said that her aunt had gone into domestic service at 14. “She’s had a hard life, but I don’t think she would have changed a bit of it. She loved working in those big houses, and that’s what she talks about.”

Nursing home staff are giving Miss Smith a party today – and yet another congratulatory card from the Queen.

Miss Smith attributes her longevity partly to whisky. Assume Scotch from the spelling, so what's her brand? Does she take it straight or with water or soda? Why do you skip the really important details? As a Scotsman told me recently, “You can get all the nutrition, vitamins and minerals you needs from a bottle of whisky.” Of course he’s drunk most of a bottle at this point.

Andrew Milner, Yokohama, Japan Alps

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