London - Admiral Horatio Nelson, who died defeating Napoleon at the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar, was a malingerer who exaggerated an eye injury to win a disability pension, a leading surgeon said yesterday.
The British war hero injured his right eye when he was hit by flying earth and rock from a French cannonball at the Siege of Calvi in Corsica in 1794. He sought a £200 annual disability pension in 1795, telling naval authorities that his eye "is in almost total darkness and very painful at times."
Surgeon Milo Keynes, researching the case for the Royal Society of Medicine's journal, remarked: "He certainly overstated his case because he was not blind. We would call it malingering nowadays."
