LONDON, ENGLAND.-Sotheby's Trafalgar sale on Wednesday, October 5, 2005 is to include a group of extraordinary, rare and intimate items which together rank as the most important private collection of Nelson relics to have come to the market in more than a century1. Consisting of some 50 items with a combined value in excess of £1.5 million, The Matcham Collection comes to sale directly through the descendants of Nelson's favourite sister – Catherine (or "Kitty") Matcham, who inherited many of the items after the death of her brother. The scope of the collection is vast, including a wide range of letters, books, medals, tableware and furniture –all essential items from Nelson's daily life. The furniture is from his cabin on HMS Victory, the books those he read during long hours at sea, and the porcelain and glassware is that used by Nelson and his officers at sea and by the admiral and his mistress Emma Lady Hamilton at home in England. Martyn Downer, author of Nelson's Purse and specialist consultant to Sotheby's for the sale, said: "Every object in the Matcham Collection is breathtaking, but together they re-create in astonishing detail the physical landscape in which Nelson worked at sea and rested at home in England with his mistress Emma Hamilton."

While each of the items in the collection is of outstanding importance, the dramatic centrepiece of group is undoubtedly Nelson's woollen undershirt. Neatly embroidered with an "N" beneath a coronet, the undershirt is the only item of Nelson's clothing known to remain in private ownership. Martyn Downer describes its significance:

"The undershirt, with one of its arms neatly cut short, is a stark and moving reminder of Nelson's disability and of his vulnerable humanity. A hole in the left shoulder of the undershirt intriguingly suggests that it may even have been worn by the admiral on the day of his death at the battle of Trafalgar. It is known that Kitty Matcham received a pitiful bundle of her brother's clothes after his death and the undershirt's careful preservation by his family for almost two hundred years indicates its importance to them. Gazing at such a highly personal relic today evokes real sympathy for a man cruelly cut down at the moment of his greatest triumph."

While Kitty received the undershirt immediately after her brother's death, a number of other items in the Matcham collection - such as the cane listed below - fell to her during Nelson's lifetime whilst others passed to her in the years after Trafalgar and following the death of Emma Hamilton in 1815. (Kitty's husband, George Matcham was Emma's executor and guardian to Horatia, Emma's child by Nelson.) In its entirety, Kitty's collection offers an unrivalled portrait of Nelson's life.