Katherine Plunket

Biography

The album is called “Wild Flowers from Nature”. In 1903 it was presented to the Royal College of Science for Ireland, later passed to the Museum of Science and Art in the National Museum of Ireland, and in 1970, together with other collections, went to the Irish National Botanic Gardens at Glasnevin.

Katherine Plunket was born on 22 November 1820 at Kilsaran, near Castlebellingham in County Louth. She was the eldest of six children, one of whom died in infancy. She was baptised in the Anglican church at Kilsaran on 13 December 1820. In the baptismal record her name is spelt with a “C”, but all her life she spelt it with a “K”.

The family was distinguished. Her paternal grandfather, William Plunket, 1st Baron Plunket, was Lord High Chancellor of Ireland. Her father, Thomas Plunket, later 2nd Baron (1792–1866), was a junior clergyman of the Church of Ireland in the year she was born and later became Bishop of Tuam, Killala and Achonry. Her mother, Louisa Jane Foster (1794–1893), was the second daughter of John William Foster of Fanevalley, Member of Parliament for Dunleer. From her mother Katherine inherited one of the family’s ancestral homes, Ballymascanlon House near Dundalk, and for many years looked after the house and gardens. The house is now a hotel.

With her younger sister Gertrude (1841–1924) she travelled through almost every European capital. With her sister Frederica (1838–1886) she made sketches of flowers in France, Italy, Spain, Germany and Ireland. These sheets made up the album of 1903. How exactly the sisters divided the work is not known, so I would not attribute individual drawings to any one of them.

She never married.

It was her age, not her drawings, that brought her fame. After the death of the American Delina Filkins on 4 December 1928, when Filkins had lived 108 years and 12 days, Plunket, on a later revision of the records, became the oldest living woman in the world, though no one knew it at the time. At 109 she received a telegram from King George V. Her longevity record for Ireland and the whole United Kingdom stood until 1970, when Ada Giddings Roe lived twelve days longer. Plunket was the last living person to have met Sir Walter Scott: the writer had stayed at her grandfather’s house in Bray while she was visiting. She was included in the first edition of the Guinness Book of Records (1955). She put her long life down to the untroubled, carefree character of her days.

She died on 14 October 1932, a month before her 112th birthday. Her death was registered three days later at Ravensdale, County Louth. Obituaries appeared in the Irish press and in The Times of London, and King George V sent a telegram of condolence to her relatives.