Most reported instances of exceptional longevity are incorrect. This was the rule everywhere until the end of the 19th century and is still the case in the vast majority of countries. Previous monographs in this series have documented the proliferation of centenarians since 1950 - in Japan and the countries of Western Europe, the only countries with time series of valid data at advanced ages (Kannisto 1994; Jeune and Vaupel 1995; Kannisto 1996; Thatcher, Kannisto, and Vaupel 1998). Although today age reports in the Nordic countries are exceptionally accurate, Lundström (1995) shows for Sweden and Skytthe and Jeune (1995 and in this volume) for Denmark that substantial age exaggeration occured up through the late 19th century. Until then in Sweden and Denmark - and still today in most countries - age statistics were based on self-reported ages in censuses or unverified ages reported on death certificates. It is only when reliable birth registrations are available for a century or more and when reports of ages above 100 are systematically checked against these data that the quality of national statistics on exceptional longevity improves.
The cult of centenarians in the 17th and 18th centuries
The history of longevity is a history of myths. Jeune (1995) describes the widespread fascination in the 17th and 18th centuries with longlivers, whose extreme ages were uncritically repeated in numerous catalogues. In this volume Laslett elaborates on this fascination, which he calls the cult of centenarians. Leading scholars of the time, such as Bacon, Locke, Harvey, Haller, and Temple, fought prejudice, demanded empirical evidence, and questioned unverified claims. They were, however, astonishingly gullible about exceptional longevity. As Laslett emphasizes, there is no indication that any of these eminent sceptics ever doubted self-reports of ages well above 100.
Laslett opens his chapter with Locke’s narrative about Alice George. Locke did not question her reported age of 108 years even though he was told that she did not marry until she was 30 years old and that she subsequently had 15 children. He did not even interview her eldest son, who lived “next door to her” and who was 77 years old. Alice George may have had her first child when she was about 20 years old, if she really had 15 children. She may have been a nonagenarian, an exceptional event at that time, if the man next door really was her son and actually was 77 years old.
Laslett seeks to explain the emergence and spread of this cult, which left its mark on the spirit of the time. Laslett’s intriguing and sharply articulated hypotheses about the roots and burgeoning of the cult deserve attention and should lead to further studies. Laslett is not certain about the extent of the cult and he emphasizes that “we must not exaggerate its effects or its substantiveness ... Its origins are rather conjectural and it is not clear how widespread it was at any one time, how many versions of it may have existed, who accepted any of them, and who, like Gregory King, seem to have been unaffected”.
Petersen and Jeune’s chapter on Bolle Luxdorph’s private library of literature on long-lived people gives an interesting glimpse into the “cult of centenarians” at that time. Luxdorph was a high-ranking Danish public servant who was acquainted with the naïve studies by Bacon and Haller of longevity and who devoted great effort to collecting portraits of the very old. As Kjærgaard (1995) stressed, he impressed on the bishops whom he had asked to report on centenarians that he wanted documentation in the form of birth and death certificates. In a case where he had the possibility to check reported information he was able to prove that an alleged centenarian had only reached the age of 93. He may have been the first to successfully carry out a validation of the age of a reported centenarian.
Laslett rightly highlights William Thoms (1803-1885) “as the protagonist, in the proper sense of that word, of the story of the emergence of the validation of centenarian claims”. Thoms in his book on “Human Longevity” (1873) acknowledges Dilke and Lewis as British predecessors. As shown by Poulain et al. in this volume, the Belgian, Quetelet, may also be regarded as a predecessor, and Desjardins in this volume reports that the Canadians Taché and Tanguy validated the age of alleged centenarians in Canada at the time of Thoms but independently of his work. Nonetheless Thoms must be recognized as the first who systematically dealt with the problems of age-validation. Also, he was the first who drew up unambiguous criteria for age-validation, criteria that are still useful and reasonable, as shown in several chapters in this volume. At the end of this introductory chapter we quote Thoms’ criteria, which he called “species of evidence”.
