Wow, thanks for all the amazing replies
! It seems a real mix of possible senility, and maybe hoping to reach that great milestone (much rarer back then than it is now), and adding a few years on
. Do we know when the letter from the Queen/King started? I have heard that is now going to stop as there are too many centenarians, perhaps they should change it to 110?!
My own example, I don't want to name in case I am unfairly besmirching him
, but it is a similar story as mentioned in many posts here. He married at a fairly late age, and then was widowed about five years later, leaving him with two children, who I suspect were looked after by the wife's sisters. I think he moved to London to escape, and hid in as sombre place as you can imagine - in a road that runs through one of the newly built London grand cemeteries , where he was in 1841, aged 50 with two male servants, but I know 1841 ages aren't necessarily accurate. But 10 years later, he was still in the same place with one female servant, aged 60, correct birth place. But he then retired to the country, back to a village where his wife's family lived, but in 1861 he was now 77! That continues in 1871, aged 87, and in 1881, aged 97, but intriguely now says parish unknown, so had people tried to find his baptism, not been able to, and he now changed his story?! Or it could be senility? There is definitely a gap between his siblings when he says he was born of 5 years, which is otherwise unexplained, but his mother does seem to have died in 1790 so could she have died in childbirth and the father forgot or was too distraught to get him baptised?