She worked as secretary at the American Consulate in Peru,[3] later becoming a stunt girl journalist when other women writers were relegated to society and fashion pages.

[4] Referring to her immediate success, George Robert Sims noted the author was "the charming lady journalist who has made the biggest score out of the disguise business since the days of the Amateur Casual".

She created a sensation in London by recording her observations on the plight of the lower classes, which she researched posing as a housemaid, street sweeper, and Covent Garden flower girl.

[7] Her journalistic writing under several pen names including pseudonyms of Mary Mortimer Maxwell and Enid, unceasingly promoted women's right to vote and denounced prison conditions for jailed suffragettes.

Her neighbors and friends included George Bernard Shaw, John Galsworthy, Thomas Hardy, H. G. Wells and suffragette Henrietta Marston.