 He was the youngest surviving son of John Gibbs, a bank manager, and Mary Ann Elizabeth Fisher, the daughter of a watchmaker.The fate of a younger son often being to enter the church, at the behest of his father, he took the Moral Sciences Tripos at St John's College, Cambridge, gaining a BA in 1899.Whilst at The University of Cambridge, Charles Sydney added the 'e' to the spelling of his own name.