Physically disabled from the age of three following a skating accident, Childers was educated at home and was not mobile for the first 12 years of her life.

It was this research with Pasteur that enabled him to bring the first rabies antitoxin back to Boston, and in turn the United States.

[4] The Osgood's ancestry was directly linked to John Quincy Adams and Anne Hutchinson, and Childers was very proud and outspoken about this connection.

[5] Her mother Margaret Cushing Osgood encouraged her to read and to pursue a life in academia, as her disability would hinder other careers.

Childers spent years of her childhood inside this library, reading for hours every day; several members of the Osgood family were among the first proprietors of the institution.

[13] Due to the changing diplomatic situation with Germany during 1915–1918, the Belgian wartime refugees displaced by the conflict were at the centre of a cross-channel tug-of-war over the supply of desperately needed aid.

[25] The author noted circumstantial evidence which, in his opinion, suggested that Childers might have been the spy, including the assertion that she had not shared her husband's enthusiasm for Irish independence and the person's use of American phraseology.

He proposed that Childers had "the qualities to carry off such a dangerous role" and that she "consistently displayed intelligence, courage, decisiveness and single-minded determination", but acknowledged that there was no conclusive evidence.