[1] One source relates that her parents were concerned at how strongly myopic their daughter was, and she was excused from drawing in school in case it strained her eyes.

[1] During her time in Sicily, Corkling noticed how healthy the peasants were and associated this with the brown bread they ate.

This led to the formation of the Bread Reform League in 1880 at Kensington Town Hall, with Corkling leading it.

[4] At her parents' request she used the name May Yates for this, as it was thought unseemly for a woman of the Corkling family to be a public figure.

[1] Corkling wrote on the advantages of brown bread[6] and other women volunteered their time to give lectures on the subject.

In 1895, she led the World's Women's Christian Temperance Union in forming a food reform department and herself became a full vegetarian.

[9] She commented that meat eating is "opposed to the highest ideal of humanity, which is horrified at the thought of our daily food being associated with the bloodshed, cruelty, and death inseparably connected with the slaughter-house".