Elizabeth Medora Leigh

Who was Elizabeth Medora Leigh?

Elizabeth Medora Leigh was the third daughter of Augusta Leigh. It is widely speculated that she was fathered by her mother's half-brother Lord Byron, although her mother's husband Colonel George Leigh was her official father.

Three days after her birth, Byron visited Augusta and the baby. He later wrote to a friend, Lady Melbourne: "Oh! but is 'worth while' — I can't tell you why — and it is not an Ape and if it is — that must be my fault." There was a folk belief, common in the 19th century, that a child born of incest would be an ape.. Byron was forced to go into exile as a result of the scandal surrounding his break-up from his wife Annabella Milbanke and his relationship with Augusta.

The child's middle name was taken from the heroine of Byron's poem The Corsair. In the family, she was known as Elizabeth or "Libby", but she also later used the name Medora.

Medora Leigh's later life was a troubled one. As a teenager, she had an affair with her older sister Georgiana's husband Henry Trevanion, and ran away with him. Trevanion fathered her daughter Marie Violette, who became a Roman Catholic nun in France in 1856 under the name "Sister St. Hilaire".