In June 1816, readers of The Observer encountered a striking obituary for a woman named Jane Lawson. According to the article, she had died at her London home on May 28 at the age of 116. Her claimed longevity was remarkable, and so were the strange habits said to have preserved her health. But the mystery surrounding her life raises an unavoidable question: was she truly as old as the obituary claimed?
Jane Vowne, later known as Jane Lawson, was supposedly born in 1700 on Essex Street in London. No birth certificate has ever been found to confirm this, though comparatively few baptismal records from the early eighteenth century survive intact. She was said to have come from a respectable family, likely professional or mercantile. Her upbringing was probably typical for someone of her class, a comfortable household with servants and an education centered on domestic arts, religious instruction, dancing, music, and drawing.
In 1726, she married a London merchant named Mr. Lawson. The couple had a daughter, and then Mr. Lawson died early, leaving Jane to raise their child alone.
A wealthy widow, she reportedly had many suitors but never remarried. Her daughter eventually married and moved away, and from the 1780s onward, Jane Lawson became increasingly known across London and then England for her great age. In her advanced years, she was remembered as a highly peculiar figure. She was reclusive, rarely leaving her home and seldom permitting visitors.
For decades, she had little contact with the outside world. An elderly maidservant visited from the late 1780s until 1806, but after that woman died, Lawson briefly hired replacements, none of whom pleased her. Apart from two small dogs and a cat, her only companion was an elderly man who maintained properties in the area. Initially he assisted her with various tasks, but he proved so capable that she eventually brought him into the house to act as manager, steward, cook, and servant.
By that time, she had lost touch with what remained of her family, her closest relatives having died long before. Her home was a large and bold building, once an elegant London residence furnished with refined taste, but it had deteriorated over the decades. The eccentric Mrs. Lawson insisted on keeping the beds in the guest rooms always made, even though no one had slept in them for years.
This contrasted sharply with her care of the rest of the house. She refused to wash the windows, fearing they would break and let in germs. Over the decades, dust and grime covered them, blocking natural light from entering the home. She did enjoy tending her garden, and neighbors remembered her sitting there during summer months, reading for hours.
Occasionally she visited others, speaking to the local grocer in the square and calling on old acquaintances. Inevitably, she outlived everyone she had known in her youth and middle age, including her daughter. Her obituary noted her old-fashioned taste in dress. She remained devoted to the styles of her early years and never changed her attire from what had been worn in the reign of George I.
She always wore powder beneath a large headdress made of horsehair nearly half a foot high, with her hair arranged over it and a cap tied under her chin, while three or four curls hung down her neck. She wore silk gowns with long trains decorated with broad frills, a very long waist tightly drawn up to the neck, and sleeves reaching just below the elbow, each attached to four or five bracelets. A large straw hat, flat heeled shoes, a black silk coat trimmed with lace, and a cane with a gold head completed her daily outfit for the last eighty years, earning her the name Mrs. Lawson as she walked around the square.
Curious contemporaries wanted to know the secret of her health. If there was any secret, it lay in superstition. Lawson was convinced that bathing would give her a cold, so she never washed. Instead, she greased her body with hog lard, which she believed kept her skin smooth.
She insisted on drinking tea from her favorite cup and would only eat while sitting in her preferred chair, with the tableware arranged in a very specific pattern. She generally refused medicines and avoided doctors. It was claimed she had exceptional teeth, never losing any, and oddly grew two new teeth in 1787 as she approached her ninetieth year. While not entirely impossible, hyperdontia is more common than many assume but rarely appears so suddenly at such an age.
More credible is the acknowledgment that her eyesight began to fail in her final years. By the time she reached 110, she was regarded as one of the most knowledgeable sources on English history in London, simply because she had lived through so much and retained a sharp memory of it. She was said to be able to recall events going back to 1715, including the Jacobite uprisings in Scotland, the Seven Years War with France between 1756 and 1763, the American War of Independence in the 1770s, and the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars stretching from 1793 to 1815. Understandably, she grew pessimistic about her own approaching death by the mid-1810s.
In mid-May 1816, an old woman living at the end of the street died suddenly, and Lawson predicted that her own time had come as well. So it was. She died at home on May 28, 1816, at what was believed to be around 116 years old. She was buried at Bunhill Fields in the English capital, with a hearse and mourning carriages lending solemnity to the funeral of one of the longest-lived women in England’s history.
After her death, it seemed Lawson had not wanted anyone entering her home. A witness who visited recalled being shocked. He saw numerous bolts and bars fixed to doors and windows, and the ceilings of the upper floors were lined with bars as if to prevent anyone entering through the roof. Ashes from the hearth had not been cleared for years and had accumulated to such a depth that they looked like beds.
Soon after, she became known nationwide through an obituary published by The Observer on June 9, 1816, under the title “A Singular Character. ” The article explained how one of England’s humble celebrities had died at her home at 12 Coldbath Square, near Clerkenwell, two weeks earlier. Readers were fascinated to learn that this woman had been born during the reign of William III and that her life had spanned the rule of five British monarchs, including George III, whose reign lasted from 1760 to 1820. Yet her obscure birth record raises doubt.
Could she really have lived to 116? Life expectancy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is often cited as around thirty-seven years, but that figure is heavily affected by infant and child mortality, with roughly forty percent of children dying before age ten. Deadly diseases such as smallpox, tuberculosis, and bubonic plague also lowered the average. However, those who survived childhood and avoided the many dangers of adult life could hope to reach a very advanced age.
Some people did live as long as Jane Lawson was claimed to have done. A modern investigation into her life has uncovered evidence suggesting she was considerably younger than previously believed. According to a burial record from Bunhill Fields, Jane was actually ninety-six when she died, meaning she was born around 1720. That record also spells her surname as “Lucen” rather than Lawson.
A marriage record from July 1751 indicates that Jane Vowne married Robert Lucen at St. Mary Le Strand, Somerset House. Robert was a very wealthy merchant, and the couple had three daughters and one son. In 1769, roughly twenty years after their marriage, Robert died and left his estate, Bluntstone Hall, to his eldest daughter, Maria, while providing for Jane’s care.
Apart from these key details, the rest of her story largely stands, though some aspects of her character may have been embellished over time. There is also debate over who benefited from her will. Some sources claim she left half of her property to the executor and watchmaker William Anthony, and the other half to members of the Haskinson family. Other accounts say her maidservant and an old friend received most of her possessions, while surviving members of her extended family received nothing.
Many people may have encountered elements of Jane Lawson’s story without realizing it. She is believed to have been a source of inspiration for Charles Dickens when he created Miss Havisham in Great Expectations, published in 1861. That character is a wealthy spinster abandoned by her fiancé on their wedding day, who then lives in a dark mansion forever wearing her wedding dress, aging prematurely from lack of sunlight. Given Lawson’s preference for old dresses, the darkness of her home, and her eccentric bitterness, it has been speculated that Dickens drew some of Havisham’s conception from her life.
But other figures have also been cited as inspirations, most notably Eliza Emily Donnithorne, an Australian woman abandoned at the altar in the 1840s who reportedly spent two decades shut in her home in her wedding dress. In the end, Jane Lawson’s story stands as a far happier source of inspiration, the story of a woman who was reputed to have lived 116 years and witnessed nearly the entire eighteenth century.