Just like many other old ladies, they baked cakes for fetes at their local church and attended Mass every day when they felt strong enough. In life, Mary Coyle - known as Kathleen - and Florence Reakes were the epitome of private, God-fearing women, living out their twilight years with modesty as they kept each other company in a small London flat.
In death, however, the story is a little more exciting. In her will, which has just been published, Ms Coyle, who was 88 when she died earlier this year, has left £18,627,469 stg to a charitable trust she established with Ms Reakes in 1979 after the two women inherited a sizeable fortune from Ms Reakes's family.
When Ms Coyle's legacy is added to Ms Reakes's estate, which was worth over £8 million when she died aged 93 in 1996 and with interest has now grown to £17 million, some 350 charities chosen by the charitable trust stand to share more than £35 million stg between them.
Ms Coyle's Irish relatives also benefited from her generosity during her lifetime.
Yesterday neighbours said they were astonished by the size of their wealth as they remembered the two women living quietly and keeping to themselves. At St Joseph's Catholic Church in Highgate, where Ms Coyle often helped with the cleaning and the flower-arranging, Father Hubert Condron told The Irish Times he remembered Ms Coyle as "a very private woman, she wasn't a high-profile member of the church".
Ms Reakes's niece, Ms Queenie Crawley, said yesterday that Ms Coyle had worked for the family as a nurse, caring for her great-uncle, Albert Hunt, who was a wealthy textiles manufacturer from Manchester.
When he died he left his fortune to Ms Reakes and to Ms Coyle and they established the Albert Hunt Trust as a memorial.
Ms Crawley told the London Evening Standard Ms Coyle often gave large amounts of money to relatives in Ireland. "Kathleen had a very large family in Ireland which she used to look after generously," she said.