PROBABLY the oldest voter in Wyre Forest was centenarian Gladys Oakey who was determined to exercise her democratic right despite her great age and being wheelchair-bound.

For the 100-year-old great, great grandmother, who can remember the suffragettes and who lost various members of her family in the fight for freedom during the two world wars, voting has always been important.

And after breaking her leg five years ago and experiencing treatment at both Worcester and Kidderminster hospitals, she was keen to give Dr Richard Taylor her support.

"If she'd been left in Worcester she would probably have died, but in Kidderminster she received a lot of care," said her 68-year-old daughter, Mary Perkins.

Mrs Oakey came from a farming family at Comhampton, between Kidderminster and Ombersley, and met the Bewdley-born prime minister Stanley Baldwin when he presented a silver spoon to mark the birth of Mary at the former Lucy Baldwin maternity unit in Stourport in the year of the coronation of King George VI.

She now lives at the Herons Nursing Home, Spennells, and has three children, eight grandchildren, six great grandchildren and a great, great granddaughter.