Gwyneth Davies- Frances Purcell

Frances Purcell emailed:

" I am so pleased to hear that Gwyneth recovered and
went on to become a doctor. She was such a
lovely gentle girl.

I did not achieve any thing so grand.

Some years after I recovered my mother passed
away and I looked after my father and brother and sister for years.

I did not marry until I was 38 years old when ."

Traditional role of unmarried daughter
Frances, your story is that of so many young women in Wales where it was expected that the daughter would give up her life to look after elderly relatives.
When the family trawled around relatives to care for my 80 year old grandmother living on an isolated Welsh hill farm my name came up (" Ann is not married...she can do it").
I resisted the pressure though on at least two other occasions when an emergency call came to return to help out on the family farm I did succumb, giving up my job and flat in London to return to Wales.

Only last week I heard of a friend's aunt, now in her late 70's, who said her life stopped at 34 years of age when she left her secretarial job in London to return to the family farm to care for her ageing parents.