Old Tom Parr

Old Tom Parr
Born	Thomas Parr 1483 Parish of Alberbury, Shropshire
Died	1635 (aged 152 years, 270 days)
Burial place	Westminster Abbey, London
Nationality	English
Other names	Old Parr
Known for	Longevity claimant
Children	2 (died in infancy)

Thomas Parr (1483 (reputedly) – 1635) was an Englishman who was said to have lived for 152 years.^[1] He is often referred to simply as Old Parr or Old Tom Parr.

A portrait of Parr hangs at Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery, with an inscription which reads "Thomas Parr died at the age of 152 yeares 9 months" "The old old very old man or Thos Parr son of John Parr of Winington in the Parish of Alberbury who was borne in the year 1483 in Rayne of King Edward IV being 152 yeares old in the year 1635". The portrait was once in the collection of the Leighton family of Loton Park, which is in Parr's home parish of Alberbury.^[2]

Biography

Early life

Old Parr's Cottage at Winnington, Shropshire

Records vary, but Parr was allegedly born around 1483 in the parish of Alberbury, Shropshire. He existed and even thrived on a diet of "subrancid cheese and milk in every form, coarse and hard bread and small drink, generally sour whey", as the physician William Harvey wrote. "On this sorry fare, but living in his home, free from care, did this poor man attain to such length of days." He married Jane Taylor at the age of 80 and had two children, both of whom died in infancy.

Later life

Tom Parr, etching by George Powle (1764–1771) after Rubens

Tom Parr purportedly had an affair when he was more than 100 years old, and fathered a child born out of wedlock, for which he had to do public penance in the church porch.^[3] After the death of his first wife at the alleged age of 110, he married his child's mother at the alleged age of 122.^[4] As news of his reported age spread, 'Old Parr' became a national celebrity and was painted by Rubens and Van Dyck.

Death

Thomas Howard, painted by Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640)

In 1635, Thomas Howard, 21^st Earl of Arundel, visited Parr and took him to London to meet King Charles I. However, he was blind and feeble when the Earl of Arundel met him, so it seems that he was very old, possibly a centenarian. Charles asked what Parr had done that was greater than any other man, and the latter replied that he had performed penance (for his affair) at the age of 100.

Parr was treated as a spectacle in London, but when Parr was eating with King Charles I, he choked on some food and died at the table. This seems to be someone's greatly exaggerated version of him simply not handling the change of diet after he went to London. The king arranged for him to be buried in Westminster Abbey on 15 November 1635.^[1] The inscription of his gravestone reads:

THO: PARR OF YE COUNTY OF SALLOP. BORNE
IN AD: 1483. HE LIVED IN YE REIGNES OF TEN
PRINCES VIZ: K.ED.4. K.ED.5. K.RICH.3.
K.HEN.7. K.HEN.8. K.EDW.6. Q.MA. Q.ELIZ. K.JA. & K. CHARLES. AGED 152 YEARES.
& WAS BURYED HERE NOVEMB. 15. 1635.

Doubts of his age

William Harvey, who carried out the autopsy on Tom Parr

William Harvey (1578–1657), the physician who discovered the circulation of the blood,^[5] performed an autopsy on Parr's body.^[6][7] The results were published in the book De ortu et natura sanguinis by John Betts as an attachment. Harvey examined Parr's body and found all his internal organs to be in a perfect state. No apparent cause of death could be determined, and it was assumed that Parr had simply died of overexposure. A modern interpretation of the results of the autopsy suggests that Parr was probably less than 70 years of age.^[8]

It is possible that Parr's records were confused with those of his grandfather. Parr did not claim to be able to remember specific events from the 15th century.^[7]

Cultural references

Thomas Parr, from National Portrait Gallery

• John Taylor wrote about Parr in his poem of 1635, The Old, Old, Very Old Man, or the Age and Long Life of Thomas Parr, drawing the moral that longevity comes from a simple country lifestyle.^[9]
• A portrait of Parr hangs in the National Portrait Gallery, London.^[10]
• Old Parr is mentioned in Dickens's Dombey and Son, chapter 41, and also in his The Old Curiosity Shop, Chapter The Last. A pony who lives an unusually long life is compared to Parr.
• Parr's old age is mentioned in the book Walden, by Henry David Thoreau.
• Mark Twain, in 1871, "proposed writing 'An Autobiography of Old Parr, the gentleman who lived to be 153 years old' but apparently never did so."^[11]
• Bram Stoker makes a reference to Thomas Parr in Dracula, the character of Abraham Van Helsing citing Parr's great age as an example of "inexplicable" phenomena that are nevertheless real.
• Old Parr is referred to in the opening page of James Joyce's novel Finnegans Wake (1939).^[12]
• His story was featured on the TV show Beyond Belief!! on the American network Nickelodeon in 1992.
• The Scotch whisky brand Grand Old Parr is named after him and recounts his claimed birth and death years on its label.^[13]
• Parr has been used as an example of the supposed health benefits of some natural medicines, including herbal colon cleansing.
• In the film The Champ (1979), a small statue of Parr instigates a conversation between a boy and his stepfather.
• Parr is named in Time Enough for Love by Robert A. Heinlein.
• Old Parr is mentioned in Robert Graves's poem A Country Mansion.
• In Hammersmith, London, there is a pub named "The Old Parrs Head".
• In Patrick O'Brian's The Surgeon's Mate, Stephen Maturin uses Old Parr as an example to encourage an aged friend contemplating marriage
• Margaret George's novel Elizabeth I imagines a meeting between Old Parr and the Queen.
• Elizabeth Hobbs's animation film "The Old, Old, Very Old Man"

Quotes

References