Britain’s oldest identical twin has died at the age of 105 – three years after her sister.
Kathleen Whitehead died peacefully this month. Her twin, Dorothy Sivyer, died in July 2022.
The pair – who called themselves “the Twinnies” – were born on 28 August 1920.
The siblings were Britain’s oldest identical twins and claimed their long life was down to balancing wine and chocolate with exercise and healthy food – and having a big group of female friends.
They had just turned 19 when the second world war was declared in 1939 and both sisters worked during the conflict. Whitehead, the eldest by a few minutes, worked as a radar operator during the war.
Whitehead had wanted to go to art college, but instead obeyed her father’s instructions and went to work for an advertising company in London.
She later took up teaching and worked at the then Delce Junior school in Rochester, and primary schools in Gillingham, Kent, until her retirement.
In her later years, she rekindled her love of art and had numerous oil paintings around her home.
The widowed Sivyer, a radiographer who treated members of the armed forces returning from the Normandy beaches, had three children, six grandchildren, and eight great-grandchildren.
After the war she became a physicist assistant and worked for the health service until she was 64.
The sisters lived together in their childhood home, built by their grandparents, during the Covid lockdown. The pair celebrated turning 100 together in 2020 and revealed they never had sibling squabbles.
Sivyer said at the time: “We haven’t come to blows or anything. I don’t mind turning 100. Nobody has got this old in our family before.”
She added: “Our teenage years were our favourite time. You’re free to do what you want and go where you want. We’ve always got on very well. We’ve never quarrelled.”
Whitehead was once engaged but never married. She lived in the same house from the age of 12.
Revealing the secret to the twins’s longevity, Whitehead said: “We do have naughty food but we also eat very healthily as well. We’ve never smoked but we do have the occasional glass of wine.”
