The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
World’s oldest person Emma Morano, 1899-2017
The world’s oldest person, Emma Morano, has died at her home in northern Italy aged 117.
Ms Morano is also believed to have been the last surviving person born in the 1800s.
Dr Carlo Bava told Associated Press that Ms Morano’s carer had called him to say she had died on Saturday while sitting in an armchair at her home in Verbania, a town on Italy’s Lake Maggiore.
Ms Morano, born on November 29 1899, had been living in a oneroom apartment, where she was kept company by her carer and two elderly nieces.
Dr Bava said she had been her usual chatterbox self until a few weeks ago. “She was slowly fading away,” he said.
He has previously said that Ms Morano lost a son to cot death when he was six months old and left her husband in the first half of the last century after he beat her.
She “abandoned the husband in the fascist era, when women were supposed to be very submissive”, Dr Bava said in a 2015 interview. “She was always very decisive.”
Ms Morano went on to support herself by working in a factory making jute bags, then at a hotel, working way beyond the usual retirement age.
She also defied health advice, Dr Bava said on Saturday. Some doctors had warned her against eating three eggs daily, which she did for years, but she ignored their advice.