She was born at Tomabil Station, New South Wales to Hugh Hamilton (1822– 1900) and his wife Margaret Clunes (née Innes).

She was a court physician to Amir Abdur Rahman Khan in Afghanistan in the 1890s, and wrote a fictionalized account of her experiences in her book A Vizier's Daughter: A Tale of the Hazara War, published in 1900.

Therefore, many of these female physicians (such as Dorothée Chellier and Françoise Legey) chose to practise overseas to places like Morocco and Algeria (respectively).

Hamilton had met Colonel Joubert of the Indian Medical Service, and he introduced her to the opportunity of working abroad.

[3] Most other foreign women doctors in the country received help from government appointment or support of any missionary or philanthropic society, but Hamilton established a successful private medical practice with help only from Colonel Joubert.

She had an unpublished work titled, The power that walks in darkness, in which she expressed her serious reservations about the Amir's often muddled reforms and his 'iron rule'.

[3] After the outbreak of war she volunteered her medical services to the Wounded Allies Relief Committee in 1915, and ran a hospital in Podgoritza, Montenegro.

She was succeeded by Helen Ekins, an ex-student, who Hamilton had lauded as the "most highly qualified... in horticulture in England" just four years before when she gained a BSc.

[6] Hamilton was claimed to be a highly accomplished and talented photographer and needlewoman, and also enjoyed music, painting, and the theatre.

She died on 6 January 1925 at the Queen Victoria Memorial Hospital, Nice, France, and was buried in the English cemetery on the Saturday after her death.