Her mother was the eldest daughter of Captain Henry Strong, an Indian army officer, whose younger sister, feminist and trade unionist Emilia Dilke, would have a profound effect on Tuckwell's life.

Tuckwell was a teacher at Bishop Otter College in Chichester from 1882 to 1884, and then taught at a working-class infant school in Chelsea until forced to stop by ill health in 1890.

Behind a screen of plans to abolish sweating, to organize women, to prohibit poisonous glazes in pottery, to indemnify victimized workers, her alert spirit is tirelessly in motion".

[4] After the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 became law on 23 December 1919, Tuckwell was one of the first seven women appointed as a Justice of the Peace,[1] and she was the first woman magistrate in London.

[2] These consist of approximately 700 folders of reports, pamphlets, leaflets and press cuttings accumulated by Tuckwell, regarding women's political and economic struggles from 1890 to 1920.