My wife has over 8 GB of photos, can't delete, and can't update because there is no room.

Question

My wife, age 74, is a hopeless computer illiterate.  She has never updated her iPad 2, still using 6.1.3.  She has managed to put 8.7 GB of photos on the machine, some from the iPad camera, some from Facebook, and many from an older Android camera smartphone that is no longer operational.  Sh mehe needs to update the ios, but cannot because there is not enough room.  However, I can't delete enough photos to make room.  I've uploaded them to Dropbox and copied them to a flash memory stick via my PC (Surface Pro 3), so there is plenty of backup, but now I need to get them off, somehow.  There is 4.15 GB of photos in one album, from a cross country RV trip, but none of them can be deleted.  There is no trash can, not delete button, nothing, either in the album or in the Photos section.  There are over 8,000 photos total, of all types, some of which can be deleted, but not enough to clear enough room to update.  There is a little over a gigabyte left, but the update says it needs 5.7 GB.
I'm not an Apple guy, and struggle with the limitations put in place by Apple, some seemingly absurd.  She put the photos on the iPad, why in the simple earth should she be prevented from removing them?

Answer 1

"if you can afford to erase your iPad..."
Actually, that's not as crazy as it sounds.  I have thought about just buying a new iPad, perhaps one with more than 16 GB of storage, just to get the newest ios.  Then, I can have the Geek Squad transfer all the data, erase the old one, update it, and give it to my daughter-in-law.  I just bought myself the Surface Pro 3 and did exactly that.  It has 128 GB internally and I have a 64 GB microSD card installed.  I'm in the process of weeding out photos on that; it has 78+ GB of photos.  We travel a lot.  In fact, we're getting ready for a major trip and that's the reason why I've been trying to clean out her iPad, to make room for even more photos.
But, without a file management system on the iPad, I have no idea how to clean it out myself.  That's what prompted my question above -- how do I clean out the photos?  I tried loading an iFile app, but they want toi upgraded ios, and I can't get the latest ios until I clean it out.  I'm trapped in a vicious circle.