Beautician with 'perfect hands' trained by Elizabeth Arden still working at 100

24 September 2023 , 16:57

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Thelma Coyd-Cording is still going strong at the age of 100 (Image: NottinghamshireLive/BPM)

A beautician trained by the queen of cosmetics Elizabeth Arden is still going strong at the age of 100.

Thelma Coyd-Cording says she is blessed with “fat cushions” – referring to her hands – which have given thousands of massages. She began her beauty career when she saw a queue for a job at Elizabeth Arden.

Young girls formed the queue as 42-year-old Thelma decided to interview for the job at Griffin & Spalding department store in Nottingham – which involved a hand examination. “If you have double joints, you can’t be a masseuse,” explained Thelma. “I had the perfect hands to be a masseuse – and won the job.”

The beautician said her hands have given thousands of massages during her career (NottinghamshireLive/BPM)

Army officer’s wife Thelma learned a wide-range of beauty treatments, quipping: “I did everything that grows hair”. Trained by Elizabeth Arden in London, her training was checked every year, she worked.

She keeps up her beauty treatments to family and friends in her home, complete with her original Elizabeth Arden treatment bed –which is older than her. “I still have a client from Lincoln,” she says. “I have known her since she was a teenager and now she is a granny. It is like a confession. People confide during the treatments.

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“Everything that is said to me is kept confidential. All I can do is give advice as an older woman, if they want it. I have been part and parcel of the family really. People come from all over the place.

Thelma was trained by Elizabeth Arden (Mirrorpix)

Thelma has a surviving sister, Betty, who is two years younger, and brother, Jeffrey, 91, who jetted in for her 100th on August 15 from America. The mother-of-two and grandmother to three grandchildren and one great-grandchild says, with a twinkle in her eye, she can’t believe she has reached 100.

But she had several parties to mark the occasion. “I am gobsmacked. Everything I do is with moderation. I rarely have a tipple”.

Rebecca Sherdley