Burdett-Coutts, Angela Georgina

Angela Georgina Burdett-Coutts (1814 to 1906). Philanthropist of the Coutts banking family, inheriting her first £1.8 million in 1837, spent her life and fortune on improving the lives of the working class in Britain, Ireland and abroad, becoming known as the 'Queen of the Poor'. Her projects were almost too numerous to keep track of. She worked with Charles Dickens founding Urania Cottage for homeless women in Shepherd's Bush, London. There were housing improvements in Westminster slums, schools, churches, technical and training colleges, model housing projects for working-class tenants, training projects and factories for women, as well as leisure facilities in clubs. Close friends with Florence Nightingale she also financed hospital provision for the Anglo-Zulu War. (Edna Healey, 'Oxford Dictionary of National Biography', 2004).