Angela Burdett-Coutts

Angela Georgina Burdett-Coutts, 1st Baroness Burdett-Coutts (21 April 1814 – 30 December 1906), born Angela Georgina Burdett, was a nineteenth-century philanthropist, the daughter of Sir Francis Burdett, 5th Baronet and Sophia, formerly Coutts, daughter of banker Thomas Coutts. In 1837 she became one of the wealthiest women in England when she inherited her grandfather's fortune of around £1.8 million pounds sterling (equivalent to £150,000,000 in 2016) following the death of her stepgrandmother, Harriot Mellon. She joined the surnames of her father and grandfather, by royal licence, to become Burdett-Coutts. Edward VII is reported to have described her as, "[a]fter my mother, the most remarkable woman in the kingdom."

Burdett-Coutts was widely known as "the richest heiress in England". She was a great collector of paintings, including many Old Masters. Amongst the contemporary paintings she purchased was Robert Scott Lauder's Christ Walking on the Sea. The Reverend Richard Harris Barham, in a ballad (part of the Ingoldsby Legends) he wrote under the pen name "Thomas Ingoldsby" for Queen Victoria's coronation, referred to her as "Miss Anjaley Coutts". She became a notable subject of public curiosity, receiving numerous offers of marriage. She inherited the country house at Holly Lodge Estate in Highgate, which was then just outside London, where she was famous for holding receptions.

Burdett-Coutts spent part of each year at Ehrenberg Hall in Torquay with her former governess and later companion Hannah Brown, to whom she was devoted. When Brown died in 1878, Burdett-Coutts wrote to a friend that she was utterly crushed by the loss of "my poor darling, the companion and sunshine of my life for 52 years". She was a great friend of both Charles Dickens and the Duke of Wellington, and she proposed to the Duke despite the great disparity in their ages.

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