The Baroness BurdettCoutts.

Auckland Star, Volume VI, Issue 1752, 25 September 1875, Page 5 (Supplement)

The Baroness BurdettCoutts.

The 'Young Englishman' is publishing a series of short biographies entitled. ' Notable Living Women and their deeds :'. and the number for June gives, under this beading, a memoir and portrait of the Baroness Bardett-Coutts. The father of this distinguished lady, Sir Francis Buxdett, w»s a noMe politician in his day, and for a period the idle of the London populace. At one time, having qttarrelled with the House of Commons, he resisted the Speaker's warrant for his arrest, and barricaded the House; but after defending the Legislature for a couple of days, he was carried off' to the Tower, and lodged there until the' prorogation of Parliament. In 1835 he joined the Conservative party. The grandfather of the Baroness, Mr Thomas Coutts, established a banking business in the Strandwhere the house of Coutts and Co. still exists—and amassed a large fortune. His first wife was a domestic servant, named Elizabeth Starkey, the daughter of a small Lancashire farmer, but a woman of superior character. The marriage was happy and fortunate. One of the daughters married the Marqtris of Bute, and another the Earl of Guildford, The third was united to Sir Francis Burdett; and the youngest daughter, Angela Georgina Burdett, born in 1814, is the lady who has been honored by the Queen with the title of Barone3s. as a tribute to her kindness of heart and unbounded benevolence. After the death of his first wife, Mr Thomas Coutts, the banker, married an actress, Miss Harriet Mellon, to whom he left his whole fortune, amounting to £900,000. His widow married a second time, under her marriage-settlement reserved to herself the full control of her immense fortune; and at her death, in 1837. she bequeathed her wealth to her first husband's favourite grandchild, Angela Georgina Burdett, who then became the principal partner in the banking house of Coutts and Co., and assumed, by royal licence, the additional surname of Coutts. Her life has since been devoted to useful and benevolent work. She has busied herself in improving the condition of the poor. Maay years ago she began a sewing school for adult women in Spitalfields ; she helped forward emigrants where it seemed to be desirable ; she established a home for the restoration of fallen women; she has subscribed for the building of new churches and schools in destitutelocalities ; she has endowed, at an outl »y of nearly £50,000 three colonial bishoprics — those of Adelaide, Capetown, and Briiish Columbia; she founded an establishment in South Australia for the benefit of the aborigines ; she erected modern dwellings in the squalid region of Bethnal Green, which are let at low weekly rentals to upwards of three hundred families ; and in the same district she built the Columbia Market, which remains a monument to her liberality, even although up to the present time it has not met with the success which she fondly anticipated. The funds for Sir Henry Jane's Topographical Survey of Jerusalem were supplied from the same purse, and the donor offered to restore the aqueducts of Solomon, which of old supplied the city with water, but the scheme was abandoned, Government having failed to countenance and assist the work. In 1871 the offer of a peerage was made through Mr Gladstone to Miss Burdett-Coutts, and accepted after some hesitation. In 1872 she was honored with the freedom of the city of London — 'the first female name,' said the Chamberlain, ' ever recorded in the lists of those whom the citizens have so delighted to honor.' A friend of the writer of this memoir has calculated that the wealth of Lady Burdett-Coutts, if told in sovereigns would weigh thirteen tons, and fill a hundred and seven flou<- sacks. The honor and esteem which have crowned her life are acknowledgments not of her wealth, but of the manner in which she has used it. As the Lord Mayor of London observed, the Baroness has devoted her princely income to the furtherance of good objects. ' not for the mere luxury of giving, but accompanying it by painstaking care and practical judgment to see, as far as possible, that the gifts are well bestowed, and the object in view accomplished.'