 Beryl Vere Nassau Adams was born on 24 September 1898, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, the daughter of Stanley Wells Adams, a Welsh-born accountant, and his Canadian wife, Lillian Adams ("née" Kennedy).Educated in Canada and England, her parents divorced when Adams was a child, but the family was reunited two decades later when Adams and her mother went to live with Adams' father and her stepmother.Adams worked briefly as a nurse with the Red Cross during World War I.