Great-grandmother, 99, discovers birthday is wrong
A great-grandmother had to postpone her 100th birthday party after discovering that she had been celebrating on the wrong day for her entire life.
Elsie Aslett's relatives applied for her to receive a congratulatory telegram from the Queen on Dec 14, the date she had always marked.
But pensions staff sent out to check the request uncovered her original birth certificate, which recorded the date as Dec 18 1908 - four days later than she had been told.
Relatives believe that her mother Elizabeth White, whom they described as "rather fond of her drink", may have confused dates between her eight children. She did not register Elsie's birth at Kennington Registry office in London until January 25 1909.
There are no living relatives to confirm which is the correct date, so the family have decided to go with the official record.
Elsie, a former shop assistant at Woolworths, said the news came as a shock but only made her party more enjoyable.
"It was all a bit of a surprise. You never doubt your date of birth. But it meant I could milk my celebrations for longer and draw them out for four days," she said.
The great-grandmother-of-14 and grandmother-of-four now lives with her son Jay, 70, and his wife Brenda, 69, in Watlington, Norfolk.
"It was a complete surprise to her. Everyone always told her she was born on the fourteenth," Brenda said.
"Her mum was rather fond of her drink so we can only imagine she was a bit merry when she went to register the birthday and got confused."
Elsie, who is still agile and active, was surrounded by more than 40 family members and friends when she had her official birthday party last week.
She lost her husband Frederick, a printer's warehouse manager, 19 years ago when he was 79.
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