Hilda Reynolds Gosling was born in 1897 in London, the daughter of Harry Ernest Gosling and Nellie Walter. Harry Gosling was a woollen merchant with business connections in Yorkshire and Lancashire and one of the founders of the firm of Aquascutum: on his death in 1919, Hilda Gosling became a director of his tailoring companies for a short time. Hilda attended successively Streatham Hill High School in London, Queenwood School in Eastbourne, and Wycombe Abbey School. With a year to fill between leaving Wycombe Abbey and taking up her place at Girton, Hilda spent part of 1916 doing war work as a voluntary waitress at Peel House in Horseferry Road, Westminster, a club for Colonial soldiers. She came up to Girton in October 1916 to study Natural Sciences and was registered simultaneously as an external medical student of London University. She also took the Primary Examinations of the Society of Apothecaries of London in Physiology and Anatomy in 1920. Hilda contributed to the war effort again in the Long Vacation of 1918, during which she undertook paid work at the Ministry of Pensions in London. Although she completed her medical examinations and was offered work at Charing Cross Hospital (1919) and Westminster Hospital (1920) Hilda never practised medicine. She says in her book, ‘Lace Collars and Cocoa Cups’, that she was ‘convinced that my academic career at Girton was not wasted. My love of learning and of books has never diminished - - ‘. In 1921 she married John Gardner. She assisted him in his business interests and later ran a second-hand bookshop until her ninetieth year. John Gardner died in 1955. Hilda was married again in 1959, to Graham Sebastian. Hilda Sebastian died in Essex in 1989.