Emma, Lady Hamilton
Born 26 April 1765 Neston, Cheshire, England
Died 15 January 1815 (aged 49) Calais, France
Cause of death Liver failure caused by amoebic dysentery
Title: Lady Hamilton (a courtesy title as wife of a British Knight, from 1791)
Dame Emma Hamilton (a title in her own right as a female member of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, from 1800)
Spouse: Sir William Hamilton
Children Emma Carew, Horatia Nelson
Emma, Lady Hamilton (26 April 1765; baptized 12 May 1765 – 15 January 1815) was an English model and actress, who is best remembered as the mistress of Lord Nelson and as the muse of the portrait artist, George Romney. She was born Amy Lyon in Swan Cottage, Ness near Neston, Cheshire, England, the daughter of Henry Lyon, a blacksmith who died when she was two months old. She was raised by her mother, the former Mary Kidd (later Cadogan), and grandmother, Sarah Kidd, at Hawarden, and received no formal education. She later went by the name of Emma Hart. Mary Lyon, left with a 2-month-old daughter after her husband had died in somewhat mysterious circumstances, returned to her family home across the Dee, where her mother Sarah Kidd helped to raise Emma, forming a bond which they maintained throughout their lives. With her grandmother struggling to make ends meet at the age of 60, and after Mary went to London in 1777 (possibly having lost a source of income through a lover employed at Sir John Glynne's estate), Emma began work, aged 12, as a maid at the Hawarden home of Doctor Honoratus Leigh Thomas, a surgeon working in Chester. Only a few months later she was unemployed again and took the stage coach to London in autumn 1777, where she started work for the Budd family in Chatham Place, Blackfriars, London, and met a maid called Jane Powell, who wanted to be an actress. Emma joined in with Jane's rehearsals for various tragic roles. Pretty and ambitious, Emma started work at the Drury Lane theatre in Covent Garden, as maid to various actresses, among them Mary Robinson.
Emma next worked as a model and dancer at the "Goddess of Health" (also known as the "Temple of Health") for James Graham, a Scottish "quack" doctor. The establishment's greatest attraction was a bed through which electricity was passed, giving paying patrons mild shocks. This supposedly aided conception, and many infertile couples paid high prices to try it.
At fifteen, Emma met Sir Harry Fetherstonhaugh, who hired her for several months as hostess and entertainer at a lengthy stag party at Fetherstonhaugh's Uppark country estate in the South Downs. She is said to have entertained Harry and his friends by dancing in the nude on the dining room table. Fetherstonhaugh took Emma there as a mistress, but frequently ignored her in favour of drinking and hunting with his friends. Emma soon formed a friendship with one of the guests, the dull but sincere Honourable Charles Francis Greville (1749–1809), second son of the then Earl of Warwick and a member of Parliament for Warwick. It was about this time (late June-early July 1781) that she conceived a child by Fetherstonhaugh.
Fetherstonhaugh was furious at the unwanted pregnancy and Emma appealed to Greville. Greville took her in as his mistress, on condition that the child was fostered out. Once the child (Emma Carew) was born, she was removed to be raised by her great-grandmother at Hawarden for her first three years, and subsequently (after a short spell in London with her mother) deposited with Mr John Blackburn, schoolmaster, and his wife in Manchester. As a young woman, Emma's daughter saw her mother reasonably frequently, but later when Emma fell into debt, her daughter worked abroad as a companion or governess.
Greville kept Emma in a small house at Edgware Row, Paddington Green, at this time a village on the rural outskirts of London. Emma was at Greville's mercy and acceded to his requests to change her name to "Mrs Emma Hart", to dress in modest outfits in subdued colours and eschew a social life. He arranged for Emma's mother, then in her thirties, who had by now taken on the name of Cadogan (possibly from a John Cadogan who lived in the area, although no marriage is recorded) to live with her as housekeeper and chaperone. Greville also taught her to enunciate more elegantly, and after a while, started to invite some of his friends to meet her. Seeing an opportunity to make some money by taking a cut of sales, Greville sent her to sit for his friend, the painter George Romney, who was looking for a new model and muse. It was then that Emma became the subject of many of Romney's most famous portraits, and soon became London's biggest celebrity. In fact, so began Romney's lifelong obsession with her, sketching her nude and clothed in many poses that he later used to create paintings in her absence. Through the popularity of Romney's work and particularly of his striking-looking young model, Emma became well known in society circles, under the name of "Emma Hart."
Amanda S. Stevenson 
