Phoebe Simson Maria Roberts was born at West Square, Southwark on 29 August 1849, the eldest daughter of James Mackenzie and Phoebe Roberts. She was named after her mother, but probably known by her middle name, Maria.

Phoebe Maria (she rarely used the Simson middle name, it seems) grew up at the family home, Heath Cottage, at Dedham, Essex but moved to London after the death of her father in 1890, where she worked as a school governess. By the Edwardian period, James Mackenzie’s two daughters and youngest son were very much a London branch of the family. In 1891 Phoebe Maria was listed as a school governess and was lodging with her brother, the veterinary surgeon Arthur Mason Roberts at Belsize Road, off Abbey Road, St John’s Wood, just a couple of streets away from her sister, Mary Mason Roberts in Bolton Road.

In 1901 she was lodging round the corner from Mary in a single room at number 9 Holtham Road (now demolished). She was a fifty-one-year-old spinster and ‘daily governess, of private means’ – in other words, she worked for herself, resided at one place and travelled to another place to teach.

Phoebe Maria died unmarried in 1903, at Holtham Road. She left her modest savings of £328 14s to her spinster sister, Mary Mason Roberts.