Gladys Morrell was born in
Somerset, Bermuda, the daughter of Terrence Misick and Thalia Jane Dalzell Misick (née Wells, who had been born in
British Guiana to Bermudian parents). She was a cousin of
Grant Carveth Wells, whose father, Thomas Grant Wells (1838–1916), was the younger brother of her maternal grandfather, John McDowell Wells (1827–1871). She attended
Bermuda High School and
North London Collegiate School, and went on to receive an honours bachelor's degree from
Royal Holloway College,
London University, in 1911, becoming one of the first Bermudians to earn a university degree; her ambition to become a lawyer, however, was unfulfilled because law schools in England did not admit women until 1919. and was active in
Millicent Fawcett's
National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies until the end of 1913. On the outbreak of
World War I, she travelled back to England with the aim of assisting the war effort. Supporting herself by working in an insurance firm in London, she then volunteered with the
Red Cross, and subsequently worked close to the front lines in
Verdun, France, serving food to soldiers and tending the wounded, until she fell ill herself and was sent back to England in 1918 – which was also the year that Britain brought in
legislation giving the franchise to women over 30 and Morrell was able to vote for the first time. where suffragettes gathered and bought it back annually; however, it would not be until 1944 that Morrell's efforts succeeded in ensuring voting rights for property-owning women in Bermuda. ==Private life and death==