The Gibbons family originated in Ireland. Stella's grandfather, Charles Preston Gibbons, was a civil engineer who spent long periods in South Africa building bridges. He and his wife Alice had six children, the second of whom—the eldest of four sons—was born in 1869 and was known by his fourth Christian name of "Telford". The Gibbons household was a turbulent one, with tensions arising from Charles Gibbons's frequent adulteries. Telford Gibbons trained as a doctor, and qualified as a physician and surgeon at the London Hospital in 1897. On 29 September 1900 he married Maude Williams, the daughter of a stockbroker. The couple bought a house in Malden Crescent, Kentish Town, a working-class district of North London, where Telford established the medical practice in which he continued for the remainder of his life.