Known as Paddie to her friends, she was born at the Manor House, West Thorney, Sussex, England and grew up near Chichester, in the English countryside as well as in London.
At the age of ten Padwick went to Finsbury Square, London where she was taught by her godmother and was also with other children through most of her teen years.
After her teen years in this household in London she went with one of her cousins to Palestine in 1910 for a visit and fell in love with the Middle East.
After her teen years she went briefly to Paris and then back with her family in Sussex where she started studying the New Testament Greek and became active in the Student Christian Movement.
Padwick was drawn to the Middle East through the reading of the biography of Douglas M. Thornton written by Temple Gairdner.
For both on a general view and on a detailed examination, it seems to me that God calls us now to strengthen the Cairo literature department of C.M.S (CMS 3)"[3] But when she offered to work overseas with C.M.S., she was rejected because of ill health.
Padwick nevertheless worked in Cairo, Egypt with the Nile Mission Press,[1] where she met Paul and Bettina Kraus[4] until 1921 and then went back to the University of London where she wrote a thesis on Arab Folklore.
After the war in 1947 she was asked to leave Palestine and go to the Nuba Mountains in Sudan where she wrote Arab text books for schools.
but never really truly retired till 1957[1] in Dorset, Village Maiden Newton close to the heart of the Hardy country of Wessex.
Somewhere in between this time she was first nursed at Omduran hospital and then by friends in Kenya until she was ready to travel to Istanbul where she spent four quiet years.
She also wrote Muslim Devotions: A Study of Prayer-Manuals in common use, as well as Mackay of the great lake, The Master of the Impossible: Sayings for the Most part in Parable from the Letters and Journals of Lilias Trotter of Algiers (1938), and many more.
She also loved going to different little bookstores and searching for little hand held prayer books and pocket manuals to include in her work on Muslim Devotions.