Britain’s oldest man ever killed by London’s fetid smog:

Sometimes newspaper archives take you down fantastically strange worm holes into history and come up in the most unexpected of places, revealing a lost world full of peculiar and comical characters.

One of the strangest of these time-travelling tales appeared in the pages of the Manchester Evening News of February 25, 1955. We’ve all read stories about hundred-year-olds and 105- year-olds and marvelled at the secret to their long lives. But this gargantuan story about London’s oldest ever inhabitant makes those other centenarians seem childlike by comparison.

The story begins by giving a lurid description of the smog that frequently cloaked and choked London in the 1950s, the days of coal fires and steam engines: “The very air turns a dirty choking yellow; motorists slow to a crawl. with headlamps peering through the midday gloom…Smog has wrapped London in lethal darkness once more.”

But this smog – or pea soup as it was nicknamed by cockneys, was nothing new. It had been silently killing people for hundreds of years.

People it turns out, like Britain’s oldest ever citizen, Thomas Parr.

Thomas, the reporters says, had been born in the Shropshire village of Glyn on the Welsh borders way way back in 1483 in the far distant reign of Edward IV. This was an utterly different and lost age for people in the England of Charles I (1600-1649) when Parrs’ story first hit the headlines.

By this time quite incredibly, Thomas would have been able to remember the Wars of the Roses, the reigns of all the Tudor monarchs including Henry VIII, the Spanish Armada ad the Reformation.

An unassuming labourer, Thomas worked on his family farm for the first 17 years of his life before moving to work on a neighbouring farm until he was 35. Then, when his father died, he moved back to Glyn to continue his father’s work. Had his physiology and genetics been anywhere close to average, he might not have expected to see another ten summers himself.

But sensationally, his life was to continue way into the distant future.

Not one to hurry love, Thomas remained a bachelor until he was 80, when he finally wed a Miss Jane Taylor. Miraculously, the couple even had two children but they didn’t inherit many of Thomas’ age-defying genes as both died in infancy.

When his wife also passed away in 1595, Thomas remained a widower for ten years, but then, out of the blue, he married again when he was the unfathomably old age of 122!

Even being married a second time at this grand age couldn’t slow him down and at 130 he was said to still be an active farmer, even still out in the fields threshing corn. His eyesight went soon after this though and he was blind for the rest of his life. You might say he had done well being sighted for 130 years!

According to John Taylor known by some as ‘the water poet’, who wrote a pamphlet about Thomas’ life about a month before his death, “his blood was most chill and cold, his sight was bereft and his sinews shrunk”, yet, still his spirits were high and he “possessed his mortal trunk, nor are his sense in his ruins shrunk”.[1] Basically Taylor was saying that Thomas still had his wits about him despite looking like a wreck.

Taylor said Thomas was quick witted, still ate well and liked to laugh and make merry, especially enjoying ale and a drink of sherry. He would have good conversations and loved company and “understanding talks”.

He was also it seems a bit of a rogue! Taylor mentions that he had actually cheated on his first wife at the age of 105 and so had been made to wear a sheet to put him to shame! This he did apparently and was spotted wearing it in church at Alberbury in Shropshire.

Thomas’ own secret words of wisdom to explain his time- travelling longevity were: “Keep your head cool by temperance and your feet warm by exercise. Rise early, go soon to bed, and if you want to grow fat [prosperous] keep your eyes open and your mouth shut.”[2]

Then suddenly in 1635, Thomas wouldn’t have known it, but he was about to hit the big time. Another Thomas, this one Howard, Earl of Arundel, came to tour his estates in Shropshire and popped in to visit Thomas Parr after hearing about his incredible age.

Dumbfounded, the Earl immediately arranged for Thomas to be taken to London for an audience with King Charles I. The story goes that when the Earl’s officers went to collect Thomas to take him to London, they found a very old man sat at the cottage door staring into space. When they asked if he was ready for the trip, he replied that his dad was inside the house!

It feels impossible to imagine what the journey south was like for the old man who had probably never been much further than the farms surrounding his home. He must have been bemused if not traumatised and shocked, especially when he reached the noisy metropolis, which must have seemed like an alien planet to him.

When he was taken before Charles I, the King asked him: "You have lived longer than other men. What have you done more than other men?" Parr replied: "Sire, I did penance when I was a hundred years old.” [3]

While in London, Thomas was visited by William Harvey, one of the King’s top physicians. On Harvey’s account Thomas: “heard extremely well, understood all that was said to him, answered immediately to questions, and had perfect apprehension of any matter in hand; he was also accustomed to walk about, “slightly supported between two persons”. His memory however was “greatly impaired, so that he scarcely recollected anything of what had happened to him when he was a young man, nothing of public incidents or of the Kings or nobles who had made a figure, or of the wars or troubles of his earlier life.”

He recalled nothing of “the manners of society, or of the prices of things or of any of the ordinary incidents which men are wont to retain in their memories. He only recollected the events of the last few years."

Perhaps Harvey should not have found this unusual given that Thomas’s life had probably been lived within a tiny village anyway and he would have had very little knowledge of the outside world. Or perhaps we should be asking questions at this point as to whether Thomas really was quite as old as he claimed to be!

In any case, others who met him reported that his digestion was excellent, though he had only one tooth and slept a great deal during the day. His diet apparently consisted almost of rancid cheese, milk, hard bread and a drink of whey. A lesson for social media diet freaks today perhaps?

But it seems the trip to London and possibly London’s poor air quality did not suit poor old Thomas at all well.

He apparently started finding it difficult to breathe and, rather sadly, passed away on November 14. The parallels with the fate of animals who are suddenly ripped from their natural habitat and stuck in a zoo should probably apply here unfortunately.

This was confirmed by a post-mortem examination carried out by Harvey, who found Thomas’ internal organs were in such a good state he felt as if the old man could have survived much longer if he had not suddenly changed his lifelong habits by coming to London.

On the King’s orders, Thomas was buried in the South transept of Westminster Abbey, Harvey stating he died at the age of 152 years and nine months.

Thomas’ story was remembered though. Much later, a small sketch of Parr’s actual meeting with King Charles was carried in the Leeds Times in July 1843 as part of an advert for Parr’s Life Pills, presumably a quack remedy that was supposed to prevent the ageing process.

The Henley Advertiser of 12 June 1875, carried a small mention of his tombstone which apparently reads: “Thomas Parr of the county of Salop, born in anno 1483. He lived in the reign of ten princes, Edward IV, Edward V, Richard III, Henry VII, Henry VIIII, Edward VI, Mary, Elizabeth, James I and Charles I; aged 152 years; and was buried here Nov 15, 1635.”

The paper also made it clear that longevity ran in the genes. It recorded that Thomas’ grandson, Robert Parr, died in 1757 at the grand old age of 124!

Three Hundred years after his death on 14 November, 1935, the Belfast Telegraph mused that his story should warn people about the importance of a good diet. It quipped that while Parr had remained in Shropshire and eaten a simple diet all his life, he stayed healthy. It was only when he had been installed in an inn on the Strand for people to come and gawp at, that he had indulged in too much bad food and wine which the paper said had caused his death.

There’s certainly a lesson here about poor city air and diet. And possibly about making massive changes at a late stage in life.

But let’s face it, being transported from a quiet country village to the craziness of London for the first time in your life is challenging enough at any age, let alone at 152!

Of course there is little historical evidence for Thomas Parr’s account of his long lifespan other than the claims made in the pamphlet by John Taylor. It seems that at some point, Thomas started telling his neighbours that he was born in 1483 and the rumour got about enough for the Earl of Arundel to hear it. Church records from before the reformation are sparse and so there is probably no way of actually verifying his birth.

Perhaps he had lied through his one tooth about his age [4] as a way of trying to seek some fame and fortune. If that really was the case then maybe we should see his death after over-indulging during his brief stay in London as just reward for a silly old rogue!

Manchester Evening News, 26 February 1955

Leeds Times, 24 July 1843

Henley Advertiser, 12 June 1875

Belfast Telegraph, 1935

Pic: Sutterstock ‘Thomas Parr’

[1] The Old Old, Very Old Man, John Taylor , Henry Goffom, (London, 1635)

[2] www.westminster-abbey.org/abbey-commemorations/commemorations/thomas-parr

[3] www.Westminster-abbeyy.org op. cit.