Primrose was the daughter of Robert Primrose, a Scottish mining legal manager and his wife, Maria Louise, nee Walsh, from London. She grew up on a farming property at Kerang. Victoria and trained in nursing at Wagga Wagga General Hospital, New South Wales. She was appointed matron and held the position for seven years before returning to Victoria. Primrose became involved in the (Royal) Victorian Trained Nurses' Association and in 1909 established and became honorary organising secretary of the Visiting Trained Nurses' Association as she valued the autonomy of a visiting position. She was an unconventional figure, cycling to her patients and one of the first women in Melbourne to gain a motorcar driver's licence.
A growing interest in maternal and infant health led Primrose to study with the Plunket Society at Dunedin, New Zealand, under Sir Frederic Truby King's regime. The promotion of this method of caring for babies became her life's work. Back in Victoria she helped establish the Society for the Health of Women and Children of Victoria - Plunket System. Their first infant welfare clinic opened in 1919 at Coburg and specially trained mothercraft nurses - formally named 'Primrose nurses' - visited private homes and department stores. There were ongoing battles over the most appropriate regime for feeding and managing babies. Primrose went on to found the Truby King Mothercraft League of South Australia in October 1934 then returned to run a hospital at Kerang. Her influence continued during the 1930s with articles in New Idea and the Housewife, and radio broadcasts, 'The 3UZ Truby King Mother Craft Circle'.
(Source: Kerreen M. Reiger, 'Primrose, Maud Violet Florinda (1872 - 1954)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, Supplementary Volume, MUP, 2005, pp 326-327.)
