77518-06A SWINDON woman has celebrated her 103rd birthday surrounded by her loving family and friends.

Muriel Kent, known as May, celebrated yesterday at the Old Town residential home where she has lived for the past seven years.

Her son Jim James, 72, who lives in Purton, said: "You wouldn't have expected her to live so long as she was never regarded as being robust.

"For example she had an appendicitis operation while she was carrying me. I don't know what the secret is. She liked walking so that so perhaps that might be it."

She has had her share of tragedy in her long life.

Her daughter died at the age of three months and her husband Henry died in 1933, the day after Jim was born.

Jim said: "She has had a lot of tragedy in her life, but she has got over it all."

May was born in Florence Street in Gorse Hill and went to Ferndale Road School.

She worked at a greengrocers' and then at Nicholson's clothing factory near the County Ground before working in the sports shop of Swindon Town footballing legend Harold Fleming.

She briefly lived on the Isle of Wight with her husband, but after his death from tuberculosis she returned to Swindon with Jim.

After a spell working for a dentist she became a civil servant during the Second World War.

She married again and lived with her second husband Ivor Kent in Moredon Park. He died fifteen years ago. She then lived in Haydon Wick before moving to the residential home in Old Town about seven years ago.

Karen Meadowcroft, manager at the home, said: "She's a lovely quiet little lady. She likes listening to music and she's very polite and pleasant."

What was happening in 1902

May Kent was born in 1902 a year that saw many world events including the crowning of a new British King.

On February 15, the Berlin underground was opened in Germany.

On May 8, disaster struck on the Caribbean island of Martinique when Mount Pelee erupted killing more than 300,000 people.

On May 20, Cuba gained independence from the United States.

On May 22, an underground gas explosion at the Canadian Coal Creek mines, in the Rockies, killed 128 men.

The Second Boer War ended on May 31. The Boer republics became part of the British Empire in return for a guarantee of self-government.

On June 16, female British subjects won the vote with the Unifor Franchise Act.

After 14 years of service, Lord Salisbury retired from his post as British Prime Minister on July 11.

After a six-week delay due to appendicitis, King Edward VII was crowned as the new King on August 9.

Theodore Roosevelt became the first American President to ride in an automobile when he rode in a Columbia Electric Victoria on August 22.