A NORTH-EAST woman has celebrated her 105th birthday.

Eunice Bowman was born in 1898 in Lancashire, the second eldest of 11 children.

The family moved to Gateshead when she was seven, when the cotton mills closed and her father travelled to the North-East in search of work.

She started work aged 16 in a munitions factory in Scotswood, where she supported the war effort.

After the war, she settled in Bill Quay, Gateshead, with her husband, Bill Pearson, a miner. The couple went on to have four children, Norman, Doris, Tommy and Connie.

After Mr Pearson's death, she remarried in 1940 to miner Frank Bowman, and had a fifth child, Anne, now a retired Gateshead Council cleaner with four children of her own.

Having worked all her life doing odd jobs for neighbours, as a cleaner at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Gateshead, and in her local fish shop, Mrs Bowman still refuses to take things easy.

Her daughter Anne said: "My mother is still very active, I try to help her around the house but once I get there, the chores are usually all done."

One of the first to congratulate her was Gateshead Mayor David Lynn, who visited Mrs Bowman at her home in Windy Nook.

He said: "Surviving two world wars and raising five children, at times single-handed, is an outstanding achievement.

"As Mayor of Gateshead, I would like to wish Mrs Bowman many happy returns and good health and happiness."