18. Lord Nelson’s mistress went to debtor’s prison less than a decade following his death
Emma Hamilton and Horatio, Lord Nelson maintained a less than discreet affair during the last few years of his life. Hamilton’s husband, Sir William knew of the affair, as did most of Neapolitan and later London society, though neither party acknowledged it publicly. Not even the birth of Nelson’s daughter, Horatia, in 1801, led him to publicly admit to the affair, though newspapers openly discussed it, and Nelson’s wife confronted him over it. After Nelson’s death during the Battle of Trafalgar, his will bequeathed most of his estate to his family. He included an admonition to the British government to care for Emma and Horatia, as the daughter of a British hero. The government ignored the request.
By 1810, Emma was destitute. Most of the following year and the next she resided under sentence to King’s Bench Prison in London. She received the freedom to reside outside the prison walls, a sentence is known as living “within the Rules”, the rules referring to the area immediately outside of the prison. She had incurred debts of more than 15,000 pounds. Rather than spend the rest of her life in debtor’s prison, Emma escaped to France in 1814. There she threw herself into the charity of the Catholic Church. She died in France in January, 1815, having gone from being the de facto Queen of Naples to a charity case in just fifteen years.