Pierre Jean Buster Martin

Biography
In an interview with The Guardian newspaper, Martin claimed to have been born "up in the hills of the Basque Country" in France. He stated that his mother fell pregnant to a member of the affluent family she served, and he and his mother were smuggled to Britain to avoid the disgrace. His mother was put in a convent and he was placed in an orphanage near Bodmin in Cornwall, run by the Sisters of Mercy, when he was three months old. Martin says that he picked up his nickname "Buster" at age three for "whacking a priest on the nose". He travelled to London, and found work running errands for stallholders in the Brixton market, the beginning of nearly 90 years of work.
He reputedly met his future wife, Iriana, a native of Tonbridge, Kent, at the age of 13 (she was 12). He claimed that they were married a year later in France. Martin stated: "I got married in 1920 and had to go over to France as I couldn't get married there due to my legal status." It has to be noted, however, that the legal age for contracting marriage in France at the time was 18 for a boy and 15 for a girl, with the consent of their parents, or 21 without the consent of father and mother. The couple stayed together for 35 years until Iriana reportedly died in 1955, although no death certificate has been uncovered. They reportedly had 17 children, born between 1921 and 1934: "twins, triplets, singletons - all sorts", among them Roberto, Rodrigues, and triplets named Georgina, Georgia and Giselle, but again no record of their births could be found. Martin claimed that they all moved abroad.
He claimed to have left the Brixton market aged 14, and joined the British Army, where he became a physical training instructor. He served in World War II, leaving the Armed Forces in 1955 after reaching the rank of regimental sergeant major. After "taking up a wide range of trades", he returned to the market, where he worked until he was 97. After complaining of boredom, he resumed work, starting at Pimlico Plumbers in London on a twenty-hour week (three days a week) three months before his claimed 100th birthday.