Nelson’s Bath love-child?
» BECAUSE of Nelson’s popularity there were also cases where some women went a stage further and claimed Nelson was the father of their child!
Horatio Nelson Rhees (1802– 1847) was born in Widcombe, Bath, “the base-born son” of 25-year-old Harriet Rhees (1777-1856); family tradition maintains Lord Nelson was the father. Harriet grew up in Widcombe, Bath, where her two illegitimate sons, Horatio
Nelson and his elder brother Henry Edward Rhees (1800– 1888), were christened at St Thomas a Becket church in 1809, four years after Nelson’s death.
In the 1841 census, she was living in Queens Street, Bath, and in 1851 she was at 5 Chapel Court, where she was described as a “pauper”. Horatio became a stonemason and married Sarah Ann Green in 1822 at St Swithin’s, Walcot, and they had seven children. At his death in 1847, he was living in Claverton Buildings, Widcombe. Sarah died in 1869 in Bath Union Workhouse, Odd Down.
Family letters state that with widowed Thomas Bolton as his housekeeper until her marriage to Rev Philip Ward in 1822.
The eldest of their ten children was Rev Horatio Nelson Ward, who was rector of Radstock at St Nicholas church from 1857 until his death in 1888. Nelson Ward Drive in Radstock was named after him in 2014. Nelson’s great grandson, Hugh Herbert Edward Nelson Ward (1863-1953), is buried in Bath Abbey churchyard.
Even before his death Nelson was a national hero and many children were named after him. Horatio Nelson Mereweather was christened in St Luke’s church, Brislington in August 1800. He appears to have married in Bengal, India, in 1820; there is no record of death but it would seem likely he died in India. The family had lived in the Somerset village since the early 17th century and there was a Mereweathers field on the site of what is now the Flowers Hill area, off Bath Road. Merryweathers flats, in Glenarm Road, perpetuate the name.
Henry Horatio Giles (1798-1871) was born on board HMS Bellerophon on August 4, 1798, just three days after Nelson’s victory at the
Horatio resembled Nelson “the Great Sea Captain” and many people seem to have perpetuated the story of his parentage, but there seems to be no actual proof, plus Harriet would have conceived the baby in about November 1801 when Nelson was at home at Merton Place, Wimbledon. The following autumn, however, after the Treaty of Amiens and a shortlived peace with France, Nelson, together with Emma and Sir William Hamilton, did make a tour of Sir William’s estates in England and Wales, where Nelson was the centre of celebrations held in his honour and generally received as a national hero.
Between July 20 and September 21, 1802, they visited nearly 50 towns but did not come to Bath or the surrounding area. So did Harriet Rhees get pregnant by someone telling her he was Nelson? Did she just have a vivid imagination? We shall never know, but at the time if you wished for a celebrity father for your illegitimate child, who better than Lord Nelson – the hero of the hour!
Battle of the Nile at Aboukir Bay. His father, Henry Giles, was a coxswain on HMS Bellerophon and his mother Nellie Giles was a nurse and assistant surgeon on the ship. She received a naval pension of £17 a year for life and died in Portsea, Hampshire, in 1860, aged 89.
Surrounded by heaps of slain and wounded during the battle, she nursed the latter “tenderly, undismayed by the horrors of the scene” and gave birth supposedly three days later, although some records give Henry’s birth date as February 14, 1799.
Either way, Nelly was pregnant during the Battle of the Nile and reputedly Nelson was godfather to her son. Baby Henry Horatio grew up to be butler to Edward Hobson of Stoke Park, Stoke Gifford in the 1850s and was later proprietor for 20 years of The Saracen’s Head at Temple Gate, Bristol, opposite Temple Meads station, where he died in 1871. The pub was lost in the Blitz.
» Thanks to www. nelsonandhisworld.co.uk and Wayne Brine for help with research for this article.