North East’s oldest woman Isabel Brown turns 110

Jan 29 2010 by Kim Carmichael, The Journal

AFTER 110 years, this super centenarian is still going strong.

Isabel Brown, who today celebrates another milestone birthday, holds the crown of being the North East’s oldest woman.

But it’s not the crown that Isabel, who lives at the Monks Haven Care Home in Cullercoats, North Tyneside, has her sights on.

Great-great-grandmother of nine Isabel said: “I get my card from the Queen every year and I look forward to it but this year I wished that she could send me a tiara. I would also like a royal blue coat just like hers.”

Isabel, who is the 13th eldest person in the UK, was born in Heaton in 1900.

Her father was a butcher and she had five younger siblings. She left school in 1914 and, after a course in shorthand typing, became a secretary.

Isabel said: “When I left school I was planning to be a teacher but then the war broke out. My friend and I took a shorthand typing course and then I got a position working on the Quayside in Newcastle.”

In 1927, she married James Brown, a book-keeper who died in 1962.