Florence Reeves

Who was Florence Reeves?

Florence Reeves was an English suffragette, civil servant and notable supercentenarian. Reeves was born in West Ham, London as one of 13 children, but lived the bulk of her life in Essex, principally in the area of Southend.

She worked as a civil servant during the First World War, working on Morse code used to transmit classified material. She married in December 1918, and was widowed in the 1970s.

Described in press reports of her death as "the oldest person in England" and the "oldest woman in the UK", Reeves was survived by both Lucy d'Abreu of Scotland, aged 113, and Judy Ingamells of Enfield, born one month before her and recognized as England's oldest woman by the Guinness Book of World Records.

Her death was announced only a few hours after that of Hendrikje van Andel-Schipper, the oldest documented person in the world at the time.