Yes I know what you mean Ged but I was describing a Traveller woman, not a "settled" woman. In the 50s, at any age over 40, a traveller woman would have looked considerably older than a woman of the same age nowadays.I know that she would have experienced a hard life on the roadside back then, some didn't even have a caravan and used a horse cart laid down on it's shafts with a tarpaulin thrown over it and tied. That was a common type of shelter that Travellers used. She would probably have had to cook over an open brushwood fire with the attendant smoke and sparks which wouldn't have helped her appearance either.
The age expectancy of travellers is considerably lower than that of the population at large, even still.