Angela Burdett-Coutts

Angela Burdett-Coutts (born Angela Burdett 24 April 1814 in Piccadilly, London - 30 December 1906) was the daughter of Sir Francis Burdett, Baronet, a Whig MP, and Sophia Coutts, who was the daughter of Thomas Coutts, the wealthy banker who founded Coutts bank.

In 1837 she became the wealthiest woman in England when she inherited her grandfather's fortune via his wife Harriot Mellon, joining the names of her father and grandfather to became known as Burdett-Coutts, for which she required a Royal License, becoming widely known as "the richest heiress in England". She also inherited the country house at The Holly Lodge in Highgate where she was famous for throwing large parties.

She spent the majority of her inherited wealth on scholarships, endowments, and a wide range of philanthropic causes. One of her earliest was to establish a home for young women who had 'turned to a life of immorality' to escape from prostitution. Other projects included:

• the building of Anglican churches
• church bells for St Paul's cathedral
• cotton gins for Nigeria
• drinking fountains for dogs
• help for Turkish peasants and the refugees of the 1877 Russo-Turkish War
• housing schemes for the working-class
• lifeboats in Brittany, France
• low-income housing
• The Ragged Schools Union
• a sewing school for women in Spitalfields
• soup kitchens
• a support organisation for Australian aborigines (in Australia)
• The Temperance Society

She also established the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) in 1883, the Westminster Technical Institute in 1893 and was closely involved with the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA). She also founded Columbia Market in the East End of London, the district where much of her work was carried out.

Charles Dickens dedicated his novel Martin Chuzzlewit to her and she had many royal and eminent friends. In recognition of her philanthropic work, in 1871 Queen Victoria conferred a peerage on her under the title Baroness Burdett-Coutts of Highgate and Brookfield. She was the first ever woman to be created a baroness in her own right. In July 1872 she became the first woman to be presented with the Freedom of the City of London and in 1874 was Edinburgh's first woman Burgess also being presented with the Freedom of that city.

In 12 February 1881, when she was age 67, she shocked polite society by marrying the American William Lehman Ashmead Bartlett, the MP for Westminster and her secretary, who was only 27. Even more surprising for the times, her new husband changed his name to Burdett-Coutts, although he did not become a baron. They had no children.

Angela Burdett-Coutts had, by the time of her death of acute bronchitis in 1906, given more than £3m to good causes. She is buried on 5 January 1907 near the West Door in the nave of Westminster Abbey.