Angela Hutor

BIOGRAPHY

Hutor was born as Angela Tordini on 12 August 1913 to Italian parents; she grew up in Cannes, France. She remembers seeing wounded World War I soldiers being carried by stretchers onto beaches near her home as a child. She also remembers the 1918-19 Spanish Flu pandemic. Hutor’s father worked at the Hyde Park hotel in London, and he brought her to the city to study at a convent boarding school.

As an Italian national without a British passport, Hutor was not allowed to help with the national effort during World War II, and had to report to the police if she changed address. After the war, she met her husband, Pawel (Paul) Hutor, and they married in 1949.

Hutor and her husband had one child, Pauline, in 1952. She had a variety of jobs throughout her life; she worked as a shorthand typist, receptionist, governess, and nightclub florist.

After her husband’s death in 1999, Hutor lived independently until she was well into her 90s. In 2019, she moved to a care home run by a group of nuns in Stoke Newington, London, England.

In April 2020, Hutor contracted COVID-19 during the coronavirus pandemic. At her worst, she was on and off an oxygen tank, eating nothing and barely drinking. Her daughter was called in to say her final goodbyes, but soon after she started rallying round. On the 75th anniversary of VE Day in May, she was well enough to sit up with a glass of wine and wave a little flag, and a few weeks later, she had completely recovered.

Hutor was confirmed privately to have attained supercentenarian status in August 2023.

RECOGNITION

At the time of Hutor’s 107th birthday, she was believed to be the UK’s oldest living survivor of COVID-19, being just a few weeks older than fellow British survivor Connie Titchen. However, it has since been reported that Joyce Wooding of Northampton, England, recovered from the disease in April 2020 at the age of 108.

Her age was validated by the ESO on 19 August 2023.

At the time of her passing, she was the fourth-oldest (known) living person in London, behind Edna Strickland, Mary Walker, and Merah Smith.