She attended Talbot Heath School in Bournemouth and read classics at St Hilda's College, Oxford.
[1] After graduating in 1912, she lectured for the Workers' Educational Association and campaigned for women's suffrage and pacifism.
She continued her education in 1920 at St Mary's Hospital Medical School, which had begun to admit women.
She was appointed an honorary consultant in 1926; she also worked at Camberwell House and Maudsley Hospital, both psychiatric institutes in London.
After receiving a diploma in psychological medicine in 1927, she helped to establish a psychiatric department and a child guidance clinic at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Bournemouth in 1928.