{"id":457980,"date":"2025-09-28T13:39:16","date_gmt":"2025-09-28T13:39:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/457980\/"},"modified":"2025-09-28T13:39:16","modified_gmt":"2025-09-28T13:39:16","slug":"is-this-the-face-of-nelsons-lover-lady-hamilton-horatio-nelson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/457980\/","title":{"rendered":"Is this the face of Nelson\u2019s lover Lady Hamilton? | Horatio Nelson"},"content":{"rendered":"

Emma Hamilton was one of the great celebrity women of her time. The daughter of a blacksmith, she used her wit, intelligence and beauty to rise to the highest echelons of European society, mingle with royalty and win the heart of Britain\u2019s great hero, Adm Horatio Nelson<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Now, more than 200 years after she died in drink and debt in Calais<\/a>, French scientists have identified what they believe are Lady Hamilton\u2019s remains<\/p>\n

Experts say they cannot be certain the bones, discovered in a tomb in the \u201cEnglish section\u201d of a graveyard in Calais and exhumed in 2021, are hers. However, a digital reconstruction of a face from the largely intact skull bears a remarkable likeness, France\u2019s foremost forensic pathologist has said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s every chance it\u2019s her but we cannot be entirely certain,\u201d Dr Philippe Charlier told the Guardian. \u201cWe have a skull that is in very good condition and about 80% of a skeleton that has been lying in the earth.\u201d<\/p>\n

The scientific examination and carbon dating of the bones pointed to a woman aged between 45 and 55 who died around 1815, Charlier said. Hamilton was 49 when she died on 15 January 1815.<\/p>\n

\u201cTraces on the mouth and teeth suggest alcohol abuse, though the rest of the body appears to have been in a healthy state. There were no traces of conditions and diseases like rickets, common in the general population at the time,\u201d Charlier added.<\/p>\n

Attempts to establish a cause of death and extract DNA from the bones have so far been unsuccessful, but Charlier\u2019s team continues to examine the skeleton in the hope scientific advances will make identification more certain. Until then, the remains are described as \u201cpresumed\u201d to be Hamilton.<\/p>\n

Charlier<\/a>, who has studied the remains of historical figures<\/a>, including Richard the Lionheart, the French kings Louis IX and Henry IV and Adolf Hitler\u2019s teeth, said the team that worked on reconstructing the face was told only that the skull was that of a European woman of a certain age. From this, they were asked to create a reproduction of how the unnamed woman may have looked.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt took 18 months and was done in a completely scientific and not artistic way. The likeness to portraits of Emma Hamilton is incredible,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Hamilton was born Amy Lyon, daughter of a Cheshire blacksmith who died shortly after her birth and his wife, Mary. She was raised by her grandmother in north Wales and sent into domestic service as a nursery maid to a local doctor at 13 years old before becoming a housemaid for the composer Thomas Linley.<\/p>\n

Aged 16, Hamilton became the mistress of the wealthy aristocrat Sir Harry Fetherstonhaugh, the MP for Portsmouth, who historical records describe as a \u201cwitless playboy\u201d who threw wild parties. At his Sussex home, she met Charles Greville, a British antiques collector and politician, who took her to London and ordered a series of portraits of her by George Romney and one by Sir Joshua Reynolds.<\/p>\n

Emma Hart as Circe, by George Romney, c 1782. At Greville\u2019s request, Hamilton changed her name to \u2018Mrs Emma Hart\u2019. Photograph: Tate<\/p>\n

Greville soon tired of Hamilton and packed her off to his widowed uncle Sir William Hamilton, the British envoy to Naples, suggesting mendaciously that her stay would be temporary. Among those she befriended was Queen Maria Carolina of Naples, the sister of Marie Antoinette.<\/p>\n

In 1791, Emma, then 26, and William, 60, travelled to London to marry and returned to Naples where she met Nelson, who was instantly smitten, historians have said. Their daughter Horatia was born in 1801 while both were still married to their respective spouses.<\/p>\n

William died in 1803 and Nelson was killed at the Battle of Trafalgar two years later, leaving Emma without protectors and penniless.<\/p>\n

After she was released from the debtors\u2019 prison, Hamilton escaped with Horatia to Calais, where she is thought to have become an alcoholic. When she died she was first buried in the churchyard of St Pierre\u2019s in Calais. Her body was later moved and her remains lost.<\/p>\n

The Calais councillor Dominique Darr\u00e9, who enlisted the help of municipal gravediggers in a decade-long hunt for Hamilton\u2019s grave, said he had almost given up hope of finding it when the skull and skeleton were discovered in the other graveyard.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feared she had been thrown into a common grave and we would never find her,\u201d Darr\u00e9 said. \u201cIt\u2019s incredible to think that this is her. I am convinced, but the experts say we have to presume it is her until science has evolved further and we have more proof.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a ceremony this month, the remains were placed in Calais\u2019s Notre Dame church.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have done this as memorial and homage to a woman who was forgotten but who is part of the history of Calais and part of our common history,\u201d Darr\u00e9 said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Emma Hamilton was one of the great celebrity women of her time. The daughter of a blacksmith, she…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":457981,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-457980","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115282205993434451","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=457980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457980\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/457981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=457980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=457980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=457980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}