Her residency at Hull House in Chicago from 1897 to 1919 put her in contact with an extensive demographic of working-class households, and the work-life dangers they faced.

[5] She spent a sheltered childhood among an extended family in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where her grandfather, Allen Hamilton, an Irish immigrant, had settled in 1823.

[10][11] Alice's father became a partner in a wholesale grocery business in Fort Wayne, but the partnership dissolved in 1885 and he withdrew from public life.

Although the business failure caused a financial loss for the family, Alice's outspoken mother, Gertrude, remained socially active in the Fort Wayne community.

[10][12][13] Alice was the second eldest of five siblings that included three sisters (Edith, Margaret, and Norah) and a brother (Arthur "Quint"), all of whom were accomplished in their respective fields.

[7] Edith (1867–1963), an educator and headmistress at Bryn Mawr School in Baltimore, became a classicist and renowned author for her essays and best-selling books on ancient Greek and Roman civilizations.

Arthur (1886–1967), the youngest Hamilton sibling, became a writer, professor of Spanish, and assistant dean for foreign students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

[1][7][13] Although Hamilton had led a privileged life in Fort Wayne, she aspired to provide some type of useful service to the world and chose medicine as a way to financially support herself.

[10] Hamilton, who was an avid reader, also cited literary influence for inspiring her to become a physician, even though she had not yet received any training in the sciences: "I meant to be a medical missionary to Teheran, having been fascinated by the description of Persia in [Edmond] O'Donovan's The Merv Oasis.

[7][19][20] Hamilton had already decided that she was not interested in establishing a medical practice and returned to the University of Michigan in February 1895 to study bacteriology as a resident graduate and lab assistant of Frederick George Novy.

[19][23][24] When Alice returned to the United States in September 1896, she continued postgraduate studies for a year at the Johns Hopkins University Medical School.

[5][7][25] While Hamilton taught and did research at the medical school during the day, she maintained an active life at Hull House, her full-time residence from 1897 to 1919.

[26] On how Hull House had helped Hamilton to find her true self she said; It "satisfied every longing, for companionship, for the excitement of new experiences, for constant intellectual stimulation, and for the sense of being caught up in a big movement which enlisted my enthusiastic loyalty.

[17] Although Hamilton moved away from Chicago in 1919 when she accepted a position as an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, she returned to Hull House and stayed for several months each spring until Jane Addams's death in 1935.

[18][30] The experience also caused Hamilton to begin considering how to merge her interests in medical science and social reform to improve the health of American workers.

[18] When the Woman's Medical School closed in 1902, Hamilton took a position as bacteriologist with the Memorial Institute for Infectious Diseases, working with Ludvig Hektoen.

[18][31] Some of Hamilton's early research in this area included attempts to identify causes of typhoid and tuberculosis in the community surrounding Hull House.

[18][36] She also authored the "Illinois Survey," the commission's report that documented its findings of industrial processes that exposed workers to lead poisoning and other illnesses.

In addition, she uncovered professions, such as polishing cut glass and wrapping cigars in "tinfoil," that exhibited an increase expose to lead poisoning, contrary to the public's beliefs.

[44] Hamilton was also a member of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of the Mortality from Tuberculosis in Dusty Trades, whose efforts "laid the groundwork for further studies and eventual widespread reform in the industry.

She traveled with Jane Addams and Emily Greene Balch to the 1915 International Congress of Women in The Hague,[45] where they met Aletta Jacobs, a Dutch pacifist, feminist, and suffragist.

[31][48] In addition, Hamilton, Addams, Jacobs, and American Quaker Carolena M. Wood became involved in a humanitarian mission to Germany to distribute food aid and investigate reports of famine.

She was excluded from social activities, could not enter the Harvard Union, attend the Faculty Club, or receive a quota of football tickets.

In addition to publishing "landmark reports for the U.S. Department of Labor" on research related to workers in Arizona copper mines and stonecutters at Indiana's limestone quarries,[51] Hamilton also wrote Industrial Poisons in the United States (1925), the first American textbook on the subject, and another related textbook, Industrial Toxicology (1934).

[31][44] Her specific interests in civil liberties, peace, birth control, and protective labor legislation for women caused some of her critics to consider her a "radical" and a "subversive.