Emma Hamilton. Emma, Lady Hamilton 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, 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, 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
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, 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, 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
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