A RETIRED children's officer born in the year of ocean liner Titanic's launch is to celebrate her 105th birthday tomorrow (Friday).

Lois Crake is believed to be the oldest resident ever at Milnthorpe care home Hartland House, where manager Mark Harrop paid a warm tribute to her this week, saying: "She's such a beautiful lady with great life experience, lots of fun memories and stories to tell."

Tim Crake told the Gazette that his mother, a former magistrate, would be marking the occasion quietly with an afternoon tea and birthday cake at Hartland House. Telegrams are expected from The Queen and the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Damian Green.

Mr Crake, 66, of Preston Patrick, described his mother as "a remarkable lady all her life". Her important work in social care and adoption began in 1939, and she devoted many years to helping single mums, babies and adoptive families. She became children's officer for Birkenhead, where she grew up, and later worked voluntarily for the Lancashire and Cheshire Child Adoption Council, which she chaired.

Even at the age of 90, Mrs Crake was still helping families by tracking down missing records from Kendal maternity home St Monica's.

The 105-year-old has two sons, Tim and Anthony, three grandchildren and her first great-grandchild is expected next spring. Her sister, Charmian Piper, is 96 and lives in Grange-over-Sands.

Mr Crake said there was no special secret to his mother's longevity, telling the Gazette: "She's always been a regular churchgoer. She's never shied away from hard work. I think that era that lived through the Second World War and endured hardship and survived, they were hardy people."

Born in August 1911 into a severe heatwave, baby Lois entered the world two months after King George V and Queen Mary were crowned, and three months before suffragettes stormed Parliament.

Her family later moved to Dorset, where her father worked on early experiments with tanks, and after the First World War she was educated in North Wales.

At 18 she read chemistry and physics at Liverpool University, but decided instead to become a Sunday school teacher and Tawny Owl in the Brownies.

With social work in her sights, she enrolled again at Liverpool and took her "first proper job" in Dundee, in 1939. Three years later she moved to Carlisle to run a shelter and home for single mothers. "This was sometimes hard and difficult work," recalled Mrs Crake in her written memoir, "many of my inhabitants had been widowed in the war."

In 1946 she embarked on her "great Australian adventure" to be a nanny to her cousin's three tiny children, travelling nine weeks on a cargo ship via Cape Horn to Melbourne.

She married Richard Crake in 1955. When he sadly died in 1982, Mrs Crake moved to Endmoor, then Kirkby Lonsdale and, latterly, Hartland House.