Angela Burdett-Coutts, 1st Baroness Burdett-Coutts

In 1837 she became one of the wealthiest women in England when she inherited her grandfather's fortune of around £1.8 million (equivalent to £210,000,000 in 2023) following the death of her stepgrandmother, Harriot Beauclerk, Duchess of St Albans.

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".

Because of her husband's American birth a clause in her stepgrandmother's will forbidding her heir to marry a foreign national was invoked and Burdett-Coutts forfeited three-fifths of her income to her sister.

One of her earliest philanthropic acts was to co-found (with Charles Dickens) a home for young women who had "turned to a life of immorality", including theft and prostitution.

[1] She avoided taking sides in partisan politics, but was actively interested in improving the condition of indigenous Africans, or the education and relief of the poor or suffering in any part of the world.

During this work (1864–1865), the group, led by Charles William Wilson, was able to produce the most accurate and comprehensive map of Jerusalem but was unable to find a new source of water.

In 1871, in recognition of her philanthropic work, Queen Victoria conferred on her a suo jure peerage as Baroness Burdett-Coutts of Highgate and Brookfield in the County of Middlesex.

[1] Preparations had been made to inter her ashes, but on the day of her funeral, Westminster Abbey unexpectedly received her uncremated body and was forced to bury her standing up.

[28][29] A portrait of her is included in the mural of heroic women by Walter P. Starmer unveiled in 1921 in the church of St Jude-on-the-Hill in Hampstead Garden Suburb, London.

[1] The book Flashman's Lady by George MacDonald Fraser makes reference to her (fictional) love for James Brooke (The White Rajah), and his rejection of her due to his physical affliction.