Scottish friends always addressed her--lived at Gight. But the ready
money, the outlying lands, the rights of fishery, the timber, failed to
liquidate Captain Byron's debts, and in 1786 Gight itself was sold to
Lord Aberdeen for L17,850. Mrs. Byron Gordon found herself, at the end
of eighteen months, stripped of her property, and reduced to the income
derived from L4200, subject to an annuity payable to her grandmother.
She bore the reverse with a composure which shows her to have been a
woman of no ordinary courage. Her letters on the subject are sensible,
not ill-expressed, and, considering the circumstances in which they were
written, give a favourable impression of her character.

The wreck of their fortunes compelled Mrs. Byron Gordon and her husband
to retire to France. At the beginning of 1788 she had returned to
London, and on January 22, 1788, at 16, Holles Street (since numbered
24, and now destroyed), in the back drawing-room of the first floor,
gave birth to her only child, George Gordon, afterwards sixth Lord
Byron. Hanson gives the names of the nurse, Mrs. Mills, the man-midwife,
Mr. Combe, the doctor, Dr. Denman, who attended Mrs. Byron at her
confinement. Dallas was, therefore, mistaken in his supposition that the
poet was born at Dover. The child was baptized in London on February 29,
1788, as is proved by the register of the parish of Marylebone.

Shortly after the birth of her son, Mrs. Byron settled in Aberdeen,
where she lived for upwards of eight years. During her stay there, in
the summer of 1791, her husband died at Valenciennes. In the year 1794,
by the death of his cousin William John Byron (1772-94) from a wound
received at the siege of Calvi, in Corsica, her son became the heir to
his great-uncle, the "wicked Lord Byron" (William, fifth Lord Byron,
1722-98), and a solicitor named Hanson was appointed to protect the
boy's interests. From Aberdeen Mrs. Byron kept up a correspondence with