BIOGRAPHY

Kluckhenn was born as Agnes Reid in St. George’s Cross, a suburb of Glasgow, Scotland, on 1 April 1909. She was the eldest of seven children, and had to leave school aged 12 to find work. Her father was a World War I veteran.

As a young woman, Kluckhenn lived in New York for five years during the Prohibition, and thoroughly enjoyed it. She moved back to Scotland where she married soldier Jimmy Hogarth, her first of two husbands; they lived in Dover, Kent, England, throughout the 1930s.

The couple emigrated to Melbourne, Australia, in 1947, settling in the northern suburb of Coburg. Kluckhenn described the town as “awfully dead” and almost returned to Scotland. However, they soon settled down and gained employment, Kluckhenn owning a card shop, and her husband working at an engineering firm. They never had children.

Kluckhenn was widowed in 1975, and she remarried three years later to Carl Kluckhenn. She moved into a care home in Brighton, another Melbourne suburb, aged 92. Her second husband died in 2005.

On her 110th birthday, Kluckhenn was reported to still be mentally sharp; she quipped that she was looking for a third husband. To celebrate the occasion, she was serenaded by a piper in a kilt, presented with a large birthday cake, and received cards from HM Queen Elizabeth II, Australia’s Prime Minister, and the Governor-General. Her younger sister, Williamina, lived a few rooms down from her in the care home, and was 95 in 2019.

Kluckhenn died on 24 November 2019 at the age of 110 years, 237 days.

Kluckhenn died on 24 November 2019 at the age of 110 years, 237 days.

RECOGNITION

Following the death of 110-year-old Wilhelmina Overall on 21 October 2018, Kluckhenn became Australia’s oldest resident. She was, at 109 years and six months, the youngest person to gain this title since Alice Lindsay in 2002. Upon her own death, the title passed to Mabel Crosby (1909 – 2020), then aged 110.

Kluckhenn’s age was verified by Dr. Andrew Holmes and Rob Campbell, and was validated by the ESO on 6 August 2024.

ATTRIBUTION

• Australia’s oldest living woman: Still living it up at age 110 The Age, 1 April 2019

GALLERY