Emma, Lady Hamilton

Emma, Lady Hamilton (born Amy Lyon; 26 April 1765 – 15 January 1815), was an English courtesan, remembered as the mistress of naval hero Lord Nelson and the muse of artist George Romney.

Emma was born in the village of Ness in Cheshire, the daughter of a blacksmith. Her father died soon after her birth and she was raised by her mother and grandmother in the nearby village of Hawarden. At the age of twelve, she followed her mother to London and, after briefly working as a domestic servant, drifted into the capital's demi-monde. By the age of fifteen she was the mistress of a young aristocrat, Sir Harry Fetherstonhaugh, who abandoned her when she became pregnant. She and her mother were taken in by Charles Francis Greville, who set them up in a house off the Edgware Road. Emma became known as Emma Hart and her mother as Mrs Cadogan. Emma's daughter was sent to Hawarden to be raised by her great-grandmother. It was during this period that Emma sat for numerous portraits by George Romney.

After a few years, Greville tired of Emma and sent her and her mother to his uncle, Sir William Hamilton, British ambassador to the Kingdom of Naples. She became Hamilton's mistress and a society hostess, famed for her performances of "Attitudes" where she struck poses from antiquity. In 1791, Hamilton and Emma were quietly married in St Marylebone Parish Church. With her new-found respectability as the ambassador's wife, she was able to attend the court in Naples and she became a friend of Queen Maria Carolina. Nelson arrived in Naples after his victory at the Battle of the Nile in August 1798 and soon embarked on an affair with Emma. The Hamiltons and Nelson returned to England in 1800 and set up a ménage à trois in London and at a country house in Merton bought by Nelson. Emma gave birth to Nelson's daughter, Horatia, in 1801. William Hamilton died in 1803, but Nelson and Emma were unable to marry as Nelson was still married to his wife Fanny. After Nelson's death at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, Emma, who had been provided for in the wills of both her husband and her lover, continued an extravagant lifestyle and fell into debt. In 1814, in order to escape her creditors, she fled to Calais with Horatia and died there six months later.

Although largely ignored during the rest of the nineteenth century, Emma was the subject of biographies in 1888 and 1905. In more recent years, her rags to riches story and love affair with Nelson has inspired historical fiction, drama and films as well as further biographies.