She began her career in London's demi-monde , becoming the mistress of a series of wealthy men, culminating in the naval hero Lord Nelson , and was the favourite model and muse of the portraitist George Romney.
In , at the age of 26, she married Sir William Hamilton , British ambassador to the Kingdom of Naples , where she was a success at court, befriending the queen who was a sister of Marie Antoinette , and meeting Nelson. She was born Amy Lyon [ 1 ] in Ness near Neston, Cheshire, England, [ 2 ] the daughter of Henry Lyon, a blacksmith [ 1 ] who died when she was two months old. She was baptised on 12 May She was raised by her mother, Mary Kidd later Cadogan , and grandmother, Sarah Kidd, at Hawarden , and received no formal education.
With her grandmother struggling to make ends meet at the age of 60, and after Mary went to London in , Emma began work, aged 12, as a maid at the Hawarden [ 3 ] home of Honoratus Leigh Thomas , a surgeon working in Chester.
Only a few months later she was unemployed again and moved to London in the autumn of She worked as a maid for actresses, including Mary Robinson.
At 15, Emma met Sir Harry Fetherstonhaugh , who hired her for several months as hostess and entertainer at a lengthy stag party at his Uppark country estate in the South Downs. She is said to have danced nude on his dining room table.
