People born in the 19th Century

[Heraldeer]

As we are now well into the 21st Century, the number of people still alive that were born in the 1800's must be dwindling. How could you find out the number of people (in the UK or the world) born prior to 1900 still alive today?

[Quizmonster]

There are, apparently, some 6,000 people in the UK currently over 100. The proportion of those who are 107+ is likely to be pretty small. There are, for example, only seven British men left who are surviving veterans of World War 1 and only three of them are over 107. Not a lot is the short answer to your question!

[Lonnie]

I have a neighbour who will be 102 in October, fantastic just to listen to him, he still gets about and does his own shopping.

[bernardo]

I found a website a while ago which has a list of all the known people in the world aged 110 or more. It listed about 70, but said that the real figure over 110 is probably more like 300. According to the Guinness Book of Records, 105 is the age beyond which there is a probability of surviving from one birthday to the next of less than 50%.

Putting these statistics together with QM's, I reckon that the total in the UK is something like this:

100 2500
101 1500
102 900
103 500
104 300
105 150
106 70
107 20
108 5
109 1

[mike b]

Tangentially off topic I know, but still fascinating - there was a correspondence in the Daily Mail Q&A section last year or so about who could claim the earliest-born grandparent. I think somebody made a convincing-looking claim (on behalf of their gran) for the 1790s!