With her husband, J. Theodore Bent, she spent two decades (1877–1897) travelling, collecting and researching in remote regions of the Eastern Mediterranean, Asia Minor, Africa, and Arabia.

[4] Distant cousins (via the Lambarts), and having met in Norway,[5] Hall-Dare married J. Theodore Bent on 2 August 1877 in the church of Staplestown, County Carlow, not far from Mabel's Irish home.

In the winter of 1882/3, the Bents made a short tour of Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean, disembarking, on their way home, at the Cycladic islands of Tinos and Amorgos to witness the Easter celebrations.

[9] It was during this trip that Mabel Bent began what she called her 'Chronicles',[10] essentially her travel notes and diaries that her husband was to use on their return to aid him in writing his articles and papers.

In the main, Mabel and Theodore Bent chose to spend the winter and spring months of every year travelling, using summers and autumns to write up their findings and prepare for their next campaigns.

Their geographical fields of interest can be roughly grouped into three primary areas: Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean (the 1880s); Africa (the early 1890s); and Southern Arabia (the mid 1890s).

[17] Few of her original photographs have survived, but many were used to produce the illustrations that feature in her husband's books and articles, and the lantern slides that enhanced his lectures at the Royal Geographical Society in London and elsewhere.

Mabel Bent tried to alleviate where possible ailments presented by the people they travelled among, for example in the Wadi Khonab (Hadramaut, Yemen) in January 1894, as recorded in her diary: 'Among the patients was brought a baby… such an awful object of thinness and sores… No cure had we, and though we did consult over ¼ drop of chlorodine, in much water, we felt it was really dangerous to meddle with the poor thing… Theodore told them it could not live long and it died that evening or next day.

Bent was made London secretary and later co-edited an update of the guidebook,[29] with Charlotte Hussey, a fellow Irishwoman, who was the official custodian of the tomb in Jerusalem.

Bent could be prosecuted for libel'; 'She is a very vindictive and obnoxious person, and has given the unfortunate Consul for a long time past a great deal of trouble by her vicious proceedings'.

Some 15 km north of Jerusalem, in the village of Bethel (modern Beytin/Baytin/Beitin), a small clay stamp/seal was found in 1957 that looked identical to one obtained by Theodore Bent on their trip into the Wadi Hadramaut (Yemen) in 1894.

This article concludes: '... the battle of the ladies promises to become historic in the annals of the Society… On the original question of the eligibility of women as Fellows of the Society it is scarcely possible that there can be two opinions.

[29] All of Bent's original diaries held in the archive of the Hellenic Society, London, except for those covering the couple's trip to Ethiopia in 1893, have now been digitized and are available on open access.