Britain's oldest person, Gladys Hooper, dies at 113

UK: Gladys Hooper, Britain's oldest person has died at the age of 113. She died at the nursing home where she lived in Ryde on the Isle of Wight on Saturday. Her son, Hermiston, 85, said:

 “She passed away, she just faded, 113-and-a-half is a good old age.

“We saw her this morning [Saturday], she seemed reasonably well, she was sleeping. We had left her for just about an hour when they called us to tell us she had passed away.”

When Hooper celebrated her last birthday, she said:

 “I don’t feel very different to when I was 75.”

Hooper broke a Guinness World Record in 2015 when she became the oldest person to undergo a hip replacement operation.

Hooper lost her husband, Leslie in 1988 who was a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps in first and second world wars.
Hooper was born on January 18, 1903, and grew up in Rottingdean, Brighton, East Sussex. She went on to study at college and became a concert pianist in London where she played with famous bandleaders of the time such as Jack Payne, Debroy Somers and Maurice Winnick.


Hooper was listed by the Gerontology Research Group as the 12th oldest person in the world.