In tracking down some record of my great aunt I'm hoping to bring some half-remembered childhood memories back into focus, but I'll need some help, if anyone would be so kind. Bear with me, please, as I need to provide some context:
My great grandmother - Mary Ann Legg - was born on Guernsey (St Peter Port, according to UK census records) c1850 and married George Harris in 1869 in Bethnal Green, London.
They had five children (the youngest being my grandmother Rosina) but George appears to have been a poor father, with a taste for alcohol and being violent to his family after his wife died in childbirth in 1891. The second-youngest daughter was Mabel Elizabeth Harris, b.1885 in Hackney. It seems that my grandmother was left to care for her father after the rest of her siblings left home.
I have traced records for them, but as yet I have found no trace of Mabel after she appeared to have been at the Women's Refuge in Chatham, Kent (1901 UK Census entry). This was a pretty pretty dire establishment for women who had fallen on hard times (many having turned to prostitution), so Mabel would obviously have looked for a way out, to rebuild her life.
Now for the Guernsey connection: If she had been rejected by her family, it's possible that she would have turned to her mother's Channel Island roots - the Legg family. As a young child, on a couple of occasions I met a great aunt who was referred to as 'Aunt Nance', from Gurnsey (and said to have been diabetic). Since there was no Nancy recorded among the family members, I therefore assume that Nance must have been Mabel Elizabeth Harris.
Try as I might, via search options available to me (I'm based in France), including an Ancestry account, I cannot turn up anything to clarify things.
Sincere thanks, in advance, for any enlightenment which anyone might be able to offer.
