Huxley became friends with the matron, Ethel Manson (later Mrs. Bedford Fenwick), and shared her ideas about promoting nursing as a profession.

[2] She was soon invited to become Matron and Lady Superintendent at Sir Patrick Dun's Hospital where she started a new scientific training course for nurses leading to an examination.

[1] In 1894 the Dublin Metropolitan Technical School for Nurses started its sixty-year life, offering "systematic teaching and uniform examinations".

Nurses there were trained at Sir Patrick Dun's and the hospital found that the connection enhanced its reputation.

[1] After "retiring" in 1902 Huxley had an opportunity to become more involved in a number of organisations which were pressing for state registration for nurses.

[3] Huxley presented her arguments for state registration of nurses to a House of Commons Select Committee which sat in 1904–1905.

[1] She worked with a Housing Society whose members were drawn from the Unitarian church congregation (which she is believed to have joined around 1912) and provided a "substantial donation".

[7] During the First World War Huxley worked for the Red Cross and the Voluntary Aid Detachment Hospital in Dublin but refused the honour of a Royal Red Cross for her work: because she disliked "publicity and honours"[1] and was described by her contemporary, Alice Reeves, as a "woman of very simple tastes... unostentatious and self-disciplined".