CENTENARIAN Betty Rew was born in 1912 when the average weekly wage was £1.40, Scott reached the South Pole and the Titanic set sail.

Happily, unlike those ill-fated journeys, Betty was to sail on to the next century.

Her childhood was spent on the edge of Melksham, Wiltshire.

In her late teens, while helping out playing piano at Sunday school in Throop, Betty met and fell in love with the minister’s son, Bob.

After a courtship seemingly spent riding pillion on Bob’s Aerial and Norton motorbikes, they were married in Moordown in 1936 in a ceremony officiated by Bob’s father.

Their happy marriage was to last until Bob’s death in 1983.

With Bob away in the Middle East, Betty’s war years were spent in Bournemouth and Devon.

She left a moving recollection about the day she and her sister saw a German bomber crash on the Purbeck hills.

The girls later watched as one of the crew was buried in Studland churchyard, a surviving crew member, now a prisoner, raising his arm with its swastika armband in the Nazi salute at the graveside.

After the war, Betty and Bob moved to Scotland with their two sons and then to Essex in 1952.

When Bob retired in 1973, the couple moved back to Boscombe, entering enthusiastically into the life of the Rotary and Inner Wheel clubs, Townswomen’s Guild and Iford United Reformed Church.

After a full, independent, happy and healthy life, Betty died peacefully at home on November 10, aged 100, having celebrated her last birthday surrounded by family and friends in the garden of her home one sunny day last July.