Her father, Joseph Marshall Sturge JP was a merchant, her mother was Anne (Annie) Burke, was a historian.

On 5 January 1899, two days before leaving, he and May got married,[2] at the Friends' Meeting Place, Leicester, England.

In 1902 she published Three Centuries in North Oxfordshire[4][5] which mixed established history with oral interviews which revealed the opinions of interviewees and their parents about past time.

[6][7] In 1910 she was living with Richard Henry Gretton when was the London editor of the Manchester Guardian and her estranged husband started divorce proceedings.

The Society of Oxford Home Students was allowed to give women degrees and Gretton joined in 1924.