Devoted couple die just hours apart after 57 years of marriage

In life, Jack and Frances Hough were inseparable. In the end, not even death could keep them apart.

After almost six decades of happy marriage, the couple from Dumfries died within hours of each other.

Their youngest daughter, Jackie Milby, said: “It helps us to know that they’re still together because they were never really apart in the

57 years they were married.”

Jack, 84, slipped away peacefully at a nursing home in Kirkcudbright early last month. His devoted wife, who had cancer, passed away 24 hours later.

Before she died, Frances, 77, told her nurses at Kirkcudbright Cottage Hospital: “That’s Jack away and I’ll just join him. Then there will just be one tea to pay for.”

From the moment they met, the young Scots Guard knew that he would spend the rest of his life with his sweetheart.

He was on leave in the early 1950s when he spotted her at a dance in Moniaive, Nithsdale.

It was love at first sight for the typically understated young man who grew up in the small village of Carsphairn, Kirkcudbrightshire.

Years later, Jack told his children that on the night he met their mother, he said to himself: “She’ll dae for me.”

They married in 1956 in a simple ceremony at their local church. In their wedding photographs, handsome Jack is grinning, clearly delighted to have secured his young bride.

Within five years, the couple had four children. Jack worked on his father-in-law’s farm while Frances had a job at a greengrocers and as a carer.

But their life took a dramatic turn in the early 1970s when Jack suffered a heart attack. The family moved to Dumfries and Jack and Frances took jobs as auxiliary nurses.

Their children grew up and moved on but the couple remained in the same house in Kingholm Quay where they shared a love of dancing and foreign holidays.

In later years, Frances cared for Jack as he struggled with osteoporosis and osteoarthritis.

When Frances was diagnosed with lung and bone cancer earlier this year they were finally separated as Jack moved into a care home.

Even then, while she was fit enough, Frances would visit her husband every day and sit with him for hours.

Sadly, Jack died at Merse House Care Home on November 9. Frances died just 24 hours later.

Daughter Violet Carr, 56, said: “We just feel they didn’t want to be apart. I like to think Dad just went to the hospital and said, ‘Come on wee lass, we’ll just gan together’.”

They are survived by their children Violet, Kenneth, Trevor and Jackie, nine grandchildren and two great-grandsons.