Ethel Caterham, aged 117, marks milestone as world’s oldest living person

Ethel Caterham celebrated her 117th birthday on Friday at Hallmark Lakeview Care Home in Lightwater, Surrey, surrounded by family and friends. She assumed the title of the world’s oldest living person in April 2025 following the death of Brazilian nun Sister Inah Canabarro Lucas, who was 116.

Born in 1907, three years before the Titanic sank and eight years before the Russian Revolution, Caterham has lived through two world wars and the COVID-19 pandemic, contracting the virus in 2020 at age 110, according to Guinness World Records.

Originally from Shipton Bellinger in Hampshire and the second youngest of eight children, she grew up in Tidworth, Wiltshire. As a teenager she travelled to India in 1927 to work as an au pair for a military family. She met her husband, Lieutenant Colonel Norman Caterham, at a dinner party in the United Kingdom in 1931; the couple later lived in Hong Kong, where she established a nursery school. The couple raised two daughters, both of whom predeceased her, and Norman died in 1976. One of her sisters, Gladys, lived to 104.

Caterham, who was still driving at age 97, received a visit from King Charles last September, shortly after her 116th birthday. During the meeting she recalled his 1969 investiture as Prince of Wales, saying, "All the girls were in love with you and wanted to marry you."

Guinness World Records notes that the record for the longest-lived person remains with Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment, who died in 1997 at 122 years and 164 days.