My mother, Gay Thurston, who has died aged 100, came to London from her native Northern Ireland in the 1930s, aged 17, to train as a nurse, and stayed and worked in the capital during the second world war.
Born in Killough, County Down, Mary Gabrielle, known as Gay, was the youngest of four daughters of Patrick Denvir, who worked at the local brickworks, and his wife, Anna (nee Russell), the owner of the village shop. Gay attended St Joseph’s primary school in Killough, before moving to London and beginning her training in 1936 at the Royal National Orthopaedic hospital in Stanmore, where she qualified in 1938.
She then trained as a general nurse at Princess Beatrice hospital in Earl’s Court in 1942. She met John Thurston, a medical student at St Mary’s hospital, during the latter part of the war and they married in 1946 after he had qualified. They worked together in London and Oxford until their first child was born in 1949.
The following year, my father was offered a company doctor position with Shell in Trinidad, so my parents and their 18-month-old son flew out to Point Fortin on the Caribbean island. The journey in those days involved several stopovers, including Newfoundland, Canada, so it was a significant undertaking for Gay, who was pregnant and had a toddler in tow. A daughter was born soon after they arrived in Trinidad.
Their time on the island was a happy and sociable period and I was born there in 1953. My parents came back to Britain the following year, with their return trip being a more leisurely two-week cruise on a banana boat.
They settled in Southend, Essex, where John worked as a GP and Gay devoted a lot of time and energy to helping him build up his practice over the following years, as well as having two more children.
After their divorce in 1971, she returned to work as a district nurse and gave significant service to the local community until she retired in 1985. She moved to East Grinstead, West Sussex, in the early 1990s to be near her daughter Sheila.
Gay is survived by her children, Graham, Sheila, Brian, Gillian and me, 14 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
