The oldest member of Manchester’s Caribbean community, Blanche Slack, has died aged 101.

Her family say she fell asleep peacefully on Wednesday, November 10, at Abbotsford nursing home in Whalley Range. She leaves behind her daughter Cynthia, nine grandchildren, 36 great-grandchildren, 23 great-great grandchildren and 5 great-great-great grandchildren.

Blanche’s working life began in the cotton fields of Nevis in the West Indies and ended in the cotton mills of Oldham.

Last year she celebrated her 100th birthday at the West Indian Centre in Moss Side, with guests including Manchester Lord Mayor Alison Firth and James Ernest Williams, the High Commissioner of St Kitts and Nevis.

Her great-granddaughter Michelle Morris, 36, said Blanche was a huge loss to them.

She said: "She passed away peacefully in her sleep surrounded by her family. She will be very sadly missed by all her family and friends as she was a lovely lady and had such a wonderful and amazing life.

"I will always remember her for her famous Saturday soup. Nobody could make it quite like her."

Mrs Slack came to Britain in 1961 to join her daughter, who was working at the Kraft cheese factory at Trafford Park.

It wasn’t her first significant sea crossing – she was born on St Kitts after her mother went into labour on a boat trip from the neighbouring island of Nevis to sell oranges.

Mrs Slack left school at the age of eight and worked in the cotton fields and sugar plantations of St Kitts which, 300 years earlier, had become the first Caribbean island to be settled by the British.

She came to Britain with grandchildren Janice Morris, now 59, Patricia Dore, 53, and Joan Cook, 54, as part of the post-war generation invited to rebuild `the mother country’.

She settled in a red-brick terrace at Fairbank Avenue in Moss Side before moving to the Abbotsford nursing home.

Speaking at her birthday last year, Mrs Slack said: "I used to pick the cotton from the tree as a child and then when I came to Britain I weaved cotton. Plenty of us would go up in the coach from Moss Side to the mills in Shaw.

"When I first felt the cold I wanted to go back. But then I got used to it and then I didn’t want to go back. Those days were lovely."

A public funeral service was being held at Christ Church on Monton Street, Moss Side, at 11.30am on Thursday followed by a burial at Southern Cemetery, Chorlton.

The High Commissioner of St Kitts and Nevis was due to attend.

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