CARER and campaigner Patricia 'Pat' Moore has died aged 92.

Pat was born on August 14, 1925. She was the youngest daughter born to John and Jessie Moore and the fifth child. Her birth came twelve years after their only son, Richard (Dick), born in 1913, and twenty years after her eldest sister, Eileen, born in 1905.

Pat’s family was ingrained in the Bournemouth and surrounding county community and her life became one of quiet dedicated service and care of those in the Bournemouth area in which she lived and worked for all of her 92 years.

Her father came to Bournemouth in 1904 when he was appointed a salesman for the south-west region for Peek Freans Biscuits. In 1930, he set up a bakery business in Bournemouth with Frank Hogben.

The business was called F. Wilkins, eventually sold to the Canadian businessman, W. Garfield Weston, by which time, there were twelve retail stores across Bournemouth, including two tea rooms.

Pat was educated at Talbot Heath School. As a child, all her holidays were spent down at the beach. She was an avid swimmer, swimming in the sea during summer, in winter, at the Stokewood Road swimming baths.

As a little girl, in December, Pat always went to see Father Christmas at the Beales department store, who arrived in a coach drawn by white horses borrowed from her father’s bakery firm, where they were more usually used to pull the carts loaded with bread and delivered around the town.

She skated at the Westover Ice Rink. In the winter months, often more severe at that time, she and her friends skated on the pond at Queen’s Park once the park keeper had ensured that the ice was thick enough. They also sledged on the slopes of the local golf courses.

She was a keen tennis player, practising on the court at her childhood family home, Dagnall Lodge, a setting which would also play host to the wedding receptions of all three of her sisters (Eileen, Vivien and Kathleen).

Finishing school during the war years, in 1942, Pat took a Business Studies Course at Bournemouth Municipal College in order to support her father. She then decided to train as a nurse, starting at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Boscombe in 1943. She passed her State Nursing Exams, gaining her hospital badge in 1945 and being awarded the Earl of Malmesbury 1st Prize for Practical Nursing in 1946, a year later the Honours Certificate of Training.

She eventually left the hospital, spending twelve years nursing her ageing parents until 1971 when her mother died, her father having died in 1959. She then took up night duty as the Senior Nursing Sister at the Alexandra Nursing Home in Bournemouth, where she worked until 1977. She then moved into social services for Dorset County Council, first as an Occupational Therapy Assistant, in 1982 as a Voluntary Work Officer, based in Wimborne until her retiral in 1985.

Throughout her life, Pat was involved in the local community in a voluntary capacity. She was a member of the Cancer Campaign Committee in Bournemouth at its foundation, founded a small self-help group for ladies with severe illnesses, acted as Treasurer of the Longhorn House Riding for the Disabled Group and was a member of the Social Committee for the Dorset society for those with cerebral palsy. As a Girl Guide in her youth, she remained involved with Guiding as an adult. She was the assistant secretary of the Trefoil Guild and served as a committee member and then Chair for the Friends of Dudsbury Guide Camp. Pat supported a number of friends and neighbours as a carer when they were unable to look after themselves in their older years.

Determined to remain independent, even when she had lost the energy and mobility of her earlier life, she moved into the Avon Cliff Nursing Home in September 2017 following a stroke. Pat passed away on Saturday, January 27, 2018. It brought to a close the life of a Bournemouth resident whose quiet and dedicated service and care to others throughout her lifetime benefited so many.