The Wife’s Tale: Frances, Lady Nelson and the Break‐up of her Marriage1

Frances, Lady Nelson, wife of Vice Admiral Lord Nelson, has been much wronged in most accounts of the break‐up of her marriage in 1801. Material from the Davison Papers, discovered in 2001 and now in the archive of the National Maritime Museum, shows that, contrary to popular myth, Frances Nelson did all that she could to save the marriage and was repeatedly rebuffed—and with increasing cruelty—by her husband. Using the newly discovered papers, and other recently located material from Nelson’s own papers, the story of the famous separation is told, throwing fresh and fascinating light on the problems faced by abandoned society wives in the early 1800s.