 Leigh was born Vivian Mary Hartley in British India on the campus of St. Paul 's School , Darjeeling . She was the only child of Ernest Richard Hartley , an English broker , and his wife , Gertrude Mary Frances ( née Yackjee ; she also used the name Robinson ) . Her father was born in Scotland in 1882 , while her mother , a devout Roman Catholic , was born in Darjeeling in 1888 and may have been of Irish and Parsi Indian ancestry . Gertrude 's parents , who lived in India , were Michael John Yackjee ( born 1840 ) , a man of independent means , and Mary Teresa Robinson ( born 1856 ) , who was born to an Irish family killed during the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and grew up in an orphanage , where she met Yackjee ; they married in 1872 and had five children , of whom Gertrude was the youngest . Ernest and Gertrude Hartley were married in 1912 in Kensington , London . 
