William Henry Dunbavin was born in St. Croix in the Virgin Islands in 1842, but went to sea and married in the east end of London.
In 1871 he married Mary Holmes at Stepney, but the following year Mary and their newborn daughter Mary died.
In 1877 he married Mary Ann Horn at Clerkenwell. The couple had three children: William Rupert (1877-1879), Violet Nellie (1880-1916) and William George (1882-1903).
I have found Mary Ann, born Q4 of 1849, at Olney, Bucks, in 1851 (HO107/1723 fol637 p18), 1861 (RG9/874 fol52 p16) and at Hackney in 1871 (RG10/336 fol33 p62).
Mary Ann died in 1888 in West Ham district. In 1891 her two children are both "visitors" with Charles Elliott, cooper (RG12/285 fol32 p8), and they are both sent to school. Violet's admission states that she previously went to school in Rickmansworth, so the children were probably in the care of a charity.
In 1901, William George was at the Wesleyan Orphanage in Bethnal Green (RG13/296 fol174 p12). He died in 1903.
Which leaves Violet missing from a couple of events.
She should be with her mother Mary Ann in 1881. Her birth was 11 Feb 1880 according to the school admission. Her father was at sea on census night as a steward on the "Gainsborough". heading back from Australia, so he doesn't help the search.
I have not yet found her in 1901 or 1911. In the third quarter of 1911 she married Thomas Henry Roods, who had been a piano builder in a "Working Boys Home" at Chelsea in 1901 but is also unfound in 1911.
After Violet's death in 1916, Thomas Roods moved to Louth in Lincolnshire and married again (twice). He is still in the piano trade in 1939.
Can anybody find Violet Nellie Dunbavin in 1881 or 1901? It's possible that she had followed her father and gone to sea, but it is the 1881 census which is bugging me!