She trained and worked as a teacher before marrying a wealthy medical doctor in 1910, at which point she started buying clothes from department stores in Bold Street, Liverpool, as well as having bespoke items made by a local dress maker.

The clothes are of high quality, with many items still unworn in their original tissue paper and boxes, the price tags and delivery information still attached.

[2] Tinne studied as a domestic science teacher at Edinburgh School of Cookery, between 1904 and 1906, then moved to Aigburth, Liverpool to live with her maternal uncle, William Brogden Patterson.

[2] There she found a teaching role at Liverpool Training School of Cookery & Technical College of Domestic Service, where she remained for three years until 1909.

Set free, upon her marriage, from the constraints of her Presbyterian up-bringing, and with access to money for the first time in her life, she appears to have embarked upon shopping with a passion."

[15] This view is backed up by the curator of the exhibition, Pauline Rushton, who describes Tinne's social work in organising widows' pensions or helping unmarried mothers.

Few items exist from before her marriage, when she started shopping "almost every afternoon",[14] nor from after the outbreak of World War II,[9] when she appears to have taken on a "make do and mend" attitude, which remained until her death.

The clothes were stored in tea chests and could be found in the couple's en-suite bathroom, the servants' quarters, and were even used to block off part of the cellar to secure other valuables.