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Emma had recently thrown herself on the goodness of Joshua Smith, leader of Southwark Borough Council, and he befriended her and gave her the money to rent an expensive home. She and Horatia moved into 12 Temple Place, in the Rules, a terraced house on the east side of Blackfriars Road where it joins what is now St. George's Circus. Out of her front window, she could see the Magdalen House, the home for penitent prostitutes, but she no longer had the money to visit as a fine patroness—or the inclination to imitate the impecunious girls as she once had. "I am so truly unhappy & wretched," she wrote to James Perry, the editor of the Morning Chronicle, who was one of her most faithful visitors. Years earlier, she had roamed Blackfriars, a maid dreaming of stardom. Now she was bereft and confined, unable to think of a way out of her terrible predicament.

∗ Emma was safe from her creditors and there were other benefits to her new home. Although the authorities had failed to ban gin shops from the area, there were fewer opportunities for shopping, drinking, and gambling.

Emma adorned her new home with her fine mahogany furniture from Merton and the exquisite china, for when her well-connected friends deigned to call. The pictures, the bust of Nelson, a few books, her jewels, and some gorgeous dresses, the remnants of her old glory, now decorated rooms that bore the traces of dirt left by the many debtors before her. The new decoration did little to lift Horatia's spirits. A celebrity child, she had grown up petted by doting adults, followed by the press, and indulged by her grandmother, and she was utterly miserable in the Rules. She had only seen Blackfriars from the comfort of a carriage when visiting the Magdalen House, and the sights and smells of her new home sickened her. Gutters ran with blood from the nearby slaughterhouses, and fetid smoke from the factories hung in the air. Children sold gin, prostitutes solicited openly, and beggars and stray dogs lingered in alleyways and courtyards. Since about a hundred families were living in houses in the Rules, most of them unlucky debtors, there were many respectable playmates for her, but she tended to stay indoors. Emma tried to comfort her daughter and keep her occupied. She hired a piano, paid for singing and music lessons, bought the best meat and fish, and threw a big party for Horatia's birthday in January.

Although Emma could not go outside the Rules, she could order in food, clothes, medicines, and books as well as receive visits from friends, family, merchants, and doctors. Even the Duke of Sussex was a frequent visitor. But the prison was a profit-making institution, and living within the Rules was disastrously expensive, with accommodation and service, such as washing, costing about five times more than they did outside. Joshua Smith covered the bills.3

The new year prompted Emma to gather her energies. She wrote to Perry in January 1813, "My friends come to town to-morrow for the season, when I must see what can be done, so that I shall not remain here." She fired off petitions to the government and the Prince of Wales and sent begging letters to her friends. Melodramatically, she declared, "I will appeal to a generous public, who will not let a woman who has served her country with the zeal I have, be left to starve and insult."4 When the newspapers published details about Lady Hamilton's efforts, men in high places were even more annoyed. Flustered, she wrote, probably to Lord Sidmouth, "This unexpected publication made me pause as a continuance in that manner wou'd appear absurd." But she could not think of another way to help herself, and she ended passionately with "Nelson loved you, & I am alone and feil folorn in the world and his Spirit if it cou'd look down wou'd bless you for your kindness & attention to his last wishes in the moment of Death & Victory."5 All her petitions failed. Joshua Smith coughed up £400 for the contents of the Richmond house (including Nelson's bloody uniform). He and James Perry somehow persuaded