Jamaican is new oldest known living person on earth

KINGSTON: Jamaican Violet Brown is the new “oldest living person in the world.”

Brown – who is 117 years and 36 days old – came to hold this prestigious title after fellow supercentenarian Emma Morano died yesterday at the aged 117 years and 137 days old. A supercentenarian is a person who has lived to or passed their 110th birthday.

The Guinness Book of World Records also recognises Brown as the first- ever verified supercentenarian from Jamaica as well as the oldest verified person from the English-speaking Caribbean island.

She was born on March 10, 1900, in Duanvale, Trelawny – not far from the birthplace of the multipleworld-record holder, track legend Usain Bolt.

During the 1900s Jamaica was a colony of the British Empire which makes Brown the last living former subject of Queen Victoria who died in January 1901.

Brown worked as a cane farmer before becoming a record keeper for a local cemetery where her husband was the caretaker.

In an interview with the Jamaica Observer, Brown – who still lives in the same house in where she was born, said: “I live by the grace of God and I am proud of my age.”

Brown’s son Harold Fairweather shared some of his mother’s favourites with the newspaper during the interview.

“She likes fish and mutton and sometimes she will have cow foot,” he said.

“But she does not eat pork or chicken.”

Brown also likes to eat sweet potatoes, Irish potatoes, breadfruit and fruits, especially oranges and mangoes.