Mexborough & Swinton Times – Friday 22 July 1932
Happy at 91
Wombwell’s Oldest Woman
The Fisherman’s Bride
Mrs. Letitia Stables.
Nearly seventy years ago a young man named George Stables went from Wombwell to a small village on the Lincolnshire border on a fishing expedition. It is not recorded what bait he used, but according to information given to a representative of the “South Yorkshire Times” the other day he landed a substantial “catch”—to wit, a wife.
That lady is now the oldest woman in Wombwell. If she lives until next March she will be ninety-one. Married 65 years ago at Darfield Church, she lost her husband in 1882.
Letitia Stables was born in Carlton-le- Moorland, near Newark. Her father was a shepherd, and Letitia had to go out to service when she was ten. For several years she remained in the neighbourhood of Newark, but was still quite young when she moved to Barnsley into the family circle of Mr. Edward Brady, a well-known Quaker.
At the age of twenty-five she had returned to Carlton and became George Stables’s wife. Speaking of husbands, she refers to her own with affection and pride, and says that no woman ever had a better.
George Stables was a boiler fireman at Wombwell Main Colliery, and before his death his family lived in York Street, which was one of the first thoroughfares to be opened when Wombwell passed from rural to urban life.
Mrs. Stables has two sons, Mr. Herbert Stables and Mr. Alfred Stables, both of Worsboro’, and two daughters, Mrs. Betsy Goulding, 24, Main Street, Wombwell, and Mrs. Wm. Goulding, Yews Avenue. Worsboro’ Dale. The two daughters married two brothers. Mrs. Stables lives with her daughter at Wombwell.
Mrs. Stables has a tender regard for the circumstances which brought about her romantic marriage. She said that although she lived near to Wombwell as a girl it was purely by chance that she met George Stables in her native village. It was a case of “love at first sight,” and after pledging his affection George used to write frequently.
It will be assumed that she replied in the usual romantic strain, but that assumption is incorrect. She told our representative that she had never penned a love letter in her life, for the simple reason that she never learned to write. But she can read newspapers with sufficient accuracy to get an intelligent idea of what is happening in the world. Reading, in fact, is one of her recreations.
A woman with a strong will and independent spirit, Mrs. Stables is contemptuous of coddling. She insists on doing her fair share of housework, and would help with the weekly wash if she were allowed. When this photograph was taken she was busy scraping potatoes, a task which not even the photographer was allowed to interrupt. Except for little indispositions she has never had recourse to medical attention. Her own words were, “I do not believe in doctors. I will never have a doctor if it is my orders; when time comes I will die like a right woman.”
Mrs Stables enjoys a state of health many people half her age might envy. She can do her shopping without escort, and frequently walks over to Worsboro’ Dale, a distance of four miles, to visit her two sons. She said she had never been troubled with corns, and therefore the rough road did not bother her in the slightest. She thinks nothing of walking to Barnsley!
Mrs. Stables has the complexion of a middle aged woman, and her hair has little of greyness about it. Her hearing is perfect, and she can see to read without glasses. She takes a glass of beer occasionally and now and then a glass of whisky.
The oldest woman in Wombwell is happy and content in a world that is for her still full of joy and interest. Her affections are centred in her children. “I really ought to be very happy,” she said, “because I have everything to make me so.”