Lady Emma Hamilton (born Amy Lyon) was an English prostitute. She is best known as the mistress of Horatio Nelson. She was born in 1761 at Liverpool and died in 1815. Taken to London by her mother - her father dies before she was born - she was employed as a maid in various households before working as a prostitute in a brothel in Arlington Street. When she was sixteen she became the 'mistress' of Sir Harry Featherstone who installed her in a cottage on his estate at Uppark in Sussex. When Harry Featherstone bored of her, he passed her on to his friend Charles Greville who rented her on condition she took no other clients, and loaned her a house in the Edgware Road in London. Charles Greville, needing to marry an heiress to solve his financial difficulties passed Amy on to his uncle Sir William Hamilton, whom she married five years later in 1791 when he was 60 and she 26. In 1798 she met Horatio Nelson - then married to a devoted wife - and the two became lovers and the two had twin babies, one of which survived and was named Horatia. After Nelson's death she was so devastated that she fell into debt, drank heavily and became depressed. After being imprisoned for debt she left England for Calais to escape her creditors. Research Emma Hamilton
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Research Emma Hamilton