Florence Steel, nee Rankin, formerly Godden, was born in Wright Street, Adelaide. From the ages four to twelve Florence was cared for by a great uncle, at O'Halloran Hill, who had also brought up her mother. On her return to the unaccustomed 'mad house' of the city streets and her parental home (she was the fifth of ten children) she finished her schooling and from the ages fourteen to nineteen worked in a boot factory, boardinghouse and restaurant. Florence married in 1912 and had had seven children (and as many miscarriages) before her increasingly invalided husband died in 1928. She received rations from the Destitute Asylum for some time before her husband's death but from 1924 she also had to go out to work to keep her family. She was able to stop working when Bert Edwards, MP, arranged for her to receive payments under the new Children's Maintenance Act in 1927. She returned to work part-time 'for herself' in about 1929. She remarried in 1935.

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