Her mother was Margaret Scott (born McMinn) and her father was William Gibb, who worked as a draper.
He died in 1907 and in the following year she began working in Glasgow where she was shocked by the poverty of the children there.
The council asked for her help and she organised volunteers to visit poor families to help reduce the high rate of infant mortality.
In 1908 she and Mrs Hamilton Maxwell started the Edinburgh Voluntary Health Workers' Association as part of the council's child welfare department.
[2] [3] When elected she went to live for a while at the Craiglockhart poorhouse to find out the main problems and this informed her studies at the University of Edinburgh which had a course for women interested in social work and reform.