[4] She had a good education including Sydney's Fort Street Girls' High School.

While she was in London she was impressed by the David Copperfield Library[3] which had been created in the home that Charles Dickens lived in, as a boy.

In 1937 there was a similar facility at Phillip Park in East Sydney and in the following year it offered an open air theatre.

[10] In 1934 she became Mary Matheson – the second wife of Thomas Matheson and in 1934, Ralph Munn and Ernest Pitt, then Chief Librarian of the Public Library of Victoria, funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, conducted a survey of public libraries in Australia and New Zealand.

[12] Edith Constance Murray organised the first use of puppets[13] and in 1949 there were weekly shows at the Children's Theatre at Burnie Park, Clovelly.