Anna Allen's mother died when she was six, and she followed her older sister into domestic service at the age of ten, as servant to a baker and confectioner at Denny, near Falkirk. She was unable to read, but the daughter of the household gave her 'lessons on a slate'. Her father took to drink after his wife's death, and after being dismayed by a drunken argment between her father and his companions one night she ran away to Glasgow, where she got work cooking at a 'chop and steak house'.
From here she again went into service in private homes. At the age of seventeen she responded to bills posted on walls of the town offering free passage to Australia for capable young women prepared to go as domestic servants. It was her intention to get assisted passage for her younger brother and father as soon as possible, so her brother would not have to continue to work in the mines at Slamannan. She came to Australia on the Morning Star - one of 105 single women - and was engaged at the dock to do the laundry at Sir William Milne's home, Sunnyside, in Glen Osmond.
Then followed a number of domestic appointments, both in Adelaide and on an isolated station near Bordertown, and she was working at Government House at the time of the visit of Prince Albert to SA. While employed at a boarding house in Rundle Street she used the first gas stove in Adelaide. In 1874 she married John S O Allen, but the marriage was not a happy one, and she spent most of the rest of her life separated from him, and bitter about her lot as a 'discarded wife'.
She lived in North Adelaide and was employed as a caterer and teacher of cookery. She taught at the School of Mines for fourteen years.
