Duanvale, Jamaica: Violet Brown spent much of her life cutting sugarcane in the fields around her home in western Jamaica. She attends church regularly, avoids pork and chicken and celebrated her 117th birthday last month. On Saturday, she is believed to have become the world’s oldest living person following the death of Emma Morano of Italy, born Nov. 29, 1899. Ms Brown said she is surprised but grateful to have lived this long. “This is what God has given me, so I have to take it — long life,” Ms Brown said in an interview in her home in the town of Duanvale. Ms Brown is considered to be the oldest person in the world with credible birth documentation, according to Robert Young, director of the supercentenarian research and database division at Gerontology Research Group, a network of volunteer researchers into the world’s oldest people. Its website says she was born on March 10, 1900.
Ms Brown has not yet been declared the world’s oldest by Guinness World Records, considered to be the official arbiter of the oldest person title but Guinness depends heavily on Young’s group. Young said he met Ms Brown and examined her birth certificate, which was issued by the British authorities who governed Jamaica at the time of her birth. “She’s the oldest person that we have sufficient documentation for at this time,” Mr Young said. Jamaica’s Prime Minister congratulated Ms Brown on Twitter. Guinness said it was researching a number of candidates for the new world’s oldest person title. “It can be a uniquely complex and sometimes lengthy process,” Guinness spokeswoman Elizabeth Montoya said.
“There is no confirmation of a new title holder until our thorough processes are complete.” Ms Brown once told her local paper, the Jamaica Gleaner, the secret to her long life is a tenet found in the Bible’s Old Testament: “Honor your mother and father so your days may be long,” she had said in in 2010. She avoids rum, but eats everything she wants except for chicken and pork. She told the Gleaner she still made her bed every morning, enjoyed reading and typing.
