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Supercentenarian Profile

Grace Greenwood

Born:

1916-04-09

Mandalay

Myanmar

Died:

2026-01-07

Faversham, Kent, England

United Kingdom

✔ Age Certified by LongeviQuest

Grace Olga Greenwood (née Anderson; formerly Griffin) was a British semi-supercentenarian who is the oldest known person ever to have been born in present-day Myanmar.

BIOGRAPHY

Grace Greenwood was born on 9 April 1916 in Mandalay, Myanmar (then British India) to an Irish father and a Burmese mother. Reportedly, Grace and her sister were regarded as outcasts and were consequently sent to an English-speaking boarding school in the rural hills of Kalaw, in what is now known as Myanmar.

At around the age of 20, Grace departed Burma in search of employment as a nurse in India. Accompanied by a friend, she undertook a perilous journey across the border, traversing swampland by night and arriving covered in leeches. In India, she worked in field hospitals, caring for soldiers during wartime. It was there that she met her future husband, Douglas Griffin. The couple later married and, with their four-week-old infant, travelled by boat to England.

Not long after the birth of their second child, her husband Douglas left and eventually returned to his homeland, South Africa. She had a hard life but managed to do everything for herself, including working nightshifts at a London hospital as her two small children remained in care for six months while she settled.

In 1957 she married Tom Greenwood who served as a major in the Army during World War Two. Later, Tom drunk to death after suffering from severe post-traumatic stress disorder. She survived breast cancer in 1960, after insisting on having her breast removed. At the time, a mastectomy was quite a radical operation. Grace’s daughter died, aged 40, with a brain tumour.

Grace Greenwood passed away on 7 January 2026 in Faversham, Kent, England, UK, at the age of 109 years, 273 days.