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The Baroness Burdett-Coutts [Obituary]

Trans. Devon. Assoc., vol.  XXXIX, (1907), p. 40.

by

J. Brooking-Rowe (Ed.).

Prepared by Michael Steer

The obituary was read at the Association’s July 1907 Axminster meeting. The Baroness, an Association Life-member (21 April 1814 – 30 December 1906), was born Angela Georgina Burdett. She became an impressive philanthropist. She was 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 about £1.8 million (equivalent to £160,000,000 in 2019), following the death of her step-grandmother,  Edward VII described her as, "after my mother, the most remarkable woman in the kingdom. She was widely known as "the richest heiress in England”. The Baroness spent part of each year at Ehrenberg Hall in Torquay with her former governess and later companion Hannah Brown, to whom she was devoted. She was a friend of Charles Dickens and the Duke of Wellington, to whom she proposed marriage despite the great disparity in their ages. Three years later, when she was 67, she shocked polite society by marrying her 29-year-old secretary, the American-born William Lehman Ashmead Bartlett, who became MP for Westminster in 1881. She endowed the bishoprics of Cape Town and Adelaide (1847), and the founding bishopric of British Columbia (1857). The granite Greyfriars Bobby Fountain in Edinburgh, with a bronze statue of Greyfriars Bobby, was her gift to that city. An excellent biography replete with her portrait and coat of arms may be accessed in Wikipedia. The obituary, from a copy of a rare and much sought-after journal can be downloaded from the Internet Archive. Google has sponsored the digitisation of books from several libraries. These books, on which copyright has expired, are available for free educational and research use, both as individual books and as full collections to aid researchers.

The Baroness Burdett-Coutts. The Baroness was a life member of the Association, having been elected in 1873. No reference to the life and work of this estimable lady is necessary here.