Martha Douglas was brought up in Glasgow and was a nurse at the Victoria Infirmary. Her hobby was needlework for which she won prizes at School. Her mother took her work to an Art Gallery where Lady Crawford took note. She offered Martha a route out of home where her father was over-powering and her Matron was dictatorial. But after working at Buckingham Palace, she became involved with the suffragist movement. Imprisonment followed but on the outbreak of the First World War, she was appointed to the trenches where after a harrowing three years as a nurse, she met her future husband bringing him back from his injuries to a farm in New Zealand.