A recently unearthed letter from Admiral Horatio Nelson to his mistress Lady Emma Hamilton in 1801 reveals how he urged her to give her daughter the newly developed smallpox vaccine.
- Admiral Horatio Nelson’s letter urges the mistress to vaccinate her daughter
- The 1801 letter supports the care of Jenner’s smallpox when many were skeptical
- Edward Jenner found that people were immune to smallpox if they caught smallpox
A recently unearthed letter from Admiral Horatio Nelson to his mistress Lady Emma Hamilton has revealed how he urged her to give her infant daughter the newly developed smallpox vaccine.
The 1801 letter, discovered in the archives of the National Maritime Museum, does not mention a dangerous mission to France that Nelson had to make, but focuses on the health of his daughter, Horatia.
It was written just three years after Edward Jenner discovered the dairies that developed smallpox working close to animals, seemed to be protected from smallpox, the human form of the disease.
In a letter to Lady Hamilton, Admiral Nelson wrote, “The boy only has a fever for two days; and there is only a slight swelling of the arm, instead of staying everywhere.
A 1801 letter shows Admiral Horatio Nelson urging his then-lover to vaccinate his daughter against smallpox, at a time when people were skeptical about innocence.
At the time, many were skeptical about vaccine use; after an attempt to inoculate children by deliberately infecting them with smallpox caused the death of the son of King George III Octavius at the age of four.
Rob Blythe, a senior curator at the National Maritime Museum, shared the letter with The Guardian, revealing a passage in which he professes his love for his mistress, Lady Hamilton.
Although they were both married, neither had a legitimate child.
People were skeptical about vaccinations in the 19th century, after King George III’s son died in an early treatment later abandoned for smallpox. Today vaccines help fight Covid-19. Pictured: A woman in Thamesmead receiving her punch today
After her death in 1805, Nelson’s father welcomed Horatia and raised her among his family.
He said: ‘Nelson is a man who sharply understands what the risks mean. He is at risk every day at sea, whether for life or death or from gunshot wounds, cannonballs, splinters … I think he, as a man of war, can probably do a better risk assessment on vaccination than other times. ‘
Blythe hopes Nelson may have heard of Jenner’s vaccine while at the captain’s table.
Nelson urged his mistress, Lady Hamilton, to inoculate his daughter, Horatia, against the smallpox virus
He told The Guardian: ‘No doubt the ship’s doctor would have kept relatively up-to-date with the latest medical developments, and when the conversation was delayed in a new narrative of the Battle of the Nile, it is possible that the ship’s doctor I would have said “. Have you heard of inoculation?” just to try to move everyone to a different topic ‘.
The charter was one of more than 2,000 acquired by the National Maritime Museum in 1946.
In 1814 a transcript of the heroic admiral’s correspondence was published, but this letter had hitherto gone unnoticed.