However, she and her two fellow female medical students, Gertrude Mead and Christina L. Goode, had to defend themselves against claims of impropriety - in particular, Mead wrote in letters to the newspapers, that they had "on no occasion examined any pateint after 5 p.m." Their cohort left for Melbourne in 1897 to complete the requirements for the Bachelor of Medicine rather than at Adelaide Hospital, which was a notoriously toxic workplace.

[2] A notable fellow student following the same trajectory was Frederic John Chapple,[3] and it was possibly through this connection that she was to meet his sister Phoebe Chapple, (though they both attended the Advanced School) whom she would encourage to study medicine, and with whom she would enjoy a lifelong friendship and professional relationship.

In the 1930s, a group of women graduates, which included Plummer, Dr. Helen Mayo, Dr. Constance Finlayson, and Pauline Grenfell Price,[4] met to solve the longstanding problem of accommodation for country and interstate female students.

St. Ann's College was officially opened with sixteen residential students in 1947, much of the delay being attributable to the War.

[6] Her residence until 1927 was on North Terrace, two doors east of Charles Street, a two-storey property, the upper floor of which for a time served as the home of the Adelaide Lyceum Club, of which she was a longtime member.