She studied at Notting Hill High School from 1897 to 1903; she then read chemistry at University College London from 1904 to 1908, earning second class honours there.

[1][2] From 1908 to 1912, she worked at the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine as a research chemist, but during this period shifted her interests to medical statistics.

[GW1][GW2] Her work during the war remains unpublished, but two posthumous papers concern the effects of higher education on fertility,[BGW2] and the correlation between economic class and child mental development.

[1] Her sole-author paper on trends in wages in London 1900–1912 was read before a meeting of the Royal Statistical Society on 18 November 1913, which RSS president F. Y. Edgeworth commented made "an important contribution to the art of measuring changes in the value of money".

The first recipient of the Frances Wood Memorial Prize was Winifred Mackenzie for her article, "Changes in the Standard of Living in the United Kingdom, 1860-1914."