During her time as a house mother at Clarendon School for Girls which was run by her aunt, she wrote Treasures of the Snow and The Tanglewoods' Secret.
[1] The third of five children (the others being Farnham, John, Oliver and Hazel), Patricia was born on 5 April 1919 in Hastings, Sussex to Harold (Harry) and Ella St. John nee Swain, shortly after her parents' return from South America (Carangola, Brazil) where they had worked as missionaries for some years.
A newspaper interview published in the Coventry Evening Telegraph on 24 October 1978, recalls that her writings - poetry and children's stories - had already earned her some money, so she financed herself while helping her brother.
Although initially working with Farnham in the main foreign hospital in Tangier, she later spent five years manning a village clinic in Xauen, or Chaouen, in a more remote area on the coast of Morocco.
[4] She was pre-deceased by her brother, Farnham, who became a medical director at Tulloch Memorial Hospital, Tangiers and died in Cambridge on 10 February 1980.