Edith was the second daughter of Samuel Tomkinson, JP, Manager of the Adelaide Branch of the Bank of Australasia, and later Member of Parliament, and his wife Louisa (MacDermott). She had 3 sisters; Amy (the eldest, d 1943), Maud and Mary. They lived at 'Mangona', one of the early residences on Mt Lofty, later to be known as 'St Barberie'. Her diary of the year 1878, which was published in 1987 by Mary de Crespigny as The Adelaide Establishment, provides a record of the life of a well-off family of the time.
Of their later years, de Crespigny records that 'In the late 1930s Misses Tomkinson lived in Frome House North Terrace Adelaide, in a beautiful mansion facing Frome Road... During each morning these very elderly ladies would set out to walk along North Terrace to the Queen Adelaide Club where they spent the day enjoying the company of their many friends' (De Crespigny p 11).
