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Hamilton (LADY EMMA born AMY LYON)

LADY EMMA, born AMY LYON, an English adventuress; born probably in Ness, Cheshire, England, April 26, 1763. She had had three places in London, had borne two children to a navy captain and a baronet, and had posed as Hygeia in a quack-doctor's "Temple of Health," when in 1782 she accepted the protection of the Hon.

Charles Greville (1749-1809), to exchange it in 1786 for that of his uncle, Sir William Hamilton (1730-1803).

After five years at Naples, in 1791 she was married at Marylebone Church to her elderly ambassador, and, returning to Italy, was straightway admitted to the closest intimacy by Maria Caroline, the queen of Ferdinand I. Her "eminent services" to the British fleet during 1796-1798 in furnishing information and procuring supplies were extolled by Lord Nelson and vaunted by herself.

Nelson had first met her in 1793; and gradually Platonic friendship ripened to guilty passion, till, four months after HAMILTON the trio's return to England, she gave birth to a daughter (1801-1881), "our beloved Horatia," so Nelson writes of her in a holograph letter to "my own dear Wife, in my eyes and the face of Heaven." Her credulous husband's death, followed four years later by Nelson's, left Emma mistress of $10,000 a year; but by 1808 she was owing $90,000, and in 1813 was arrested for debt.

Next year she escaped to Calais, where she died in penury, Jan. 15, 1815.