Burbury married on 12 April 1860 Alice Ann, eldest daughter of Thomas Edward Taylor, J.P., of Dodworth Hall, Barnsley, Yorkshire, and had issue four sons and two daughters. A portrait of Burbury by William E. Miller (1884) is in the possession of his widow.
[The Times, 23 Aug. 1911; Nature, 31 Aug. 1911; Proc. Roy. Soc. A. 584, p. 81; Proc. Lond. Math. Soc. vol. x.; Men of the Time, 1899; private information; see art. Watson, Henry William.]
BURDETT-COUTTS, ANGELA GEORGINA, Baroness Burdett-Coutts (1814–1906), philanthropist, born at the residence of her maternal grandfather, 80 Piccadilly, London, 21 April 1814, was youngest of the six children a son and five daughters of Sir Francis Burdett (1770-1844) [q. v.], politician. Her mother was Sophia, third and youngest daughter of Thomas Coutts [q. v.], the banker, by his first wife, Susan Starkie. Thomas Coutts very soon after the death of his first wife in 1815 married Harriot Mellon [q. v.], the actress, to whom, at his death on 24 Feb. 1822, he bequeathed unconditionally his entire fortune, including his interest in his bank.
Miss Burdett's childhood was passed with her parents at their country residences, Ramsbury, Wiltshire, and Foremark, Derbyshire, with occasional visits to Bath. Later she spent most of her time at her father's town house in St. James's Place. The house was frequented by leading politicians and literary men, including Disraeli, Tom Moore, and Samuel Rogers, all of whom became the girl's lifelong friends. She inherited many of her father's broad views, and among other qualities his natural and persuasive power of public speaking. While still young she made a prolonged tour abroad with her mother, lasting some three years. She studied under foreign masters and mistresses in each country where a stay was made. Her maternal grandfather's banking connection with European royalty and nobility, and her father's wide acquaintance with leaders of advanced opinion on the continent, introduced her to a wide social foreign circle which liberalised her interests and sympathies. She never considered her education ended, and amongst those whom she looked on almost as tutors in later years were William Pengelly [q. v.], the geologist, Faraday, and Wheatstone, all of whom stirred in her scientific interests.
Meanwhile Angela had attracted the favourable notice of the widow and heiress of her grandfather Coutts, who on 16 June 1827 married as her second husband William Aubrey de Vere Beauclerk, ninth duke of St. Albans. The duchess took a great liking to the girl, and on her death on 6 Aug. 1837 she made Angela heiress to her vast property. After providing for an annuity of 10,000l. a year to the duke, together with the occupancy of No. 80 Piccadilly and Holly Lodge, Highgate, during his life, the duchess left to Angela the reversion of those properties, and the whole of her remaining possessions, including her dominant share in Coutts's bank, and her leasehold interest in the town mansion, No. 1 Stratton Street. The duke her second husband died on 27 May 1849, when the duchess's testamentary disposition took full effect.
The duchess's selection of Angela, the youngest of her five step-granddaughters, to succeed to her first husband's fortune was kept secret to the end, and came as a surprise to the family. The duchess at first devised her bequest to Angela absolutely, but under pressure of the partners in Coutts's bank, which had become a financial institution of great importance, she modified her intention by devising the bank property in remainder to Angela's elder sisters on Angela's death without issue. The rest of the fortune remained free of restriction. On her succession to her fortune, Miss Burdett assumed the additional surname of Coutts by royal licence, and added the Coutts arms to those of the Burdett family.
In the autumn of 1837 Miss Burdett-Coutts removed from her father's house to 1 Stratton Street, taking there as her companion Hannah Meredith, her former governess. Miss Meredith married in 1844 William Brown, a medical practitioner, who died on 23 Oct. 1855, but Mrs. Brown remained the inseparable friend and chief companion of Miss Burdett-Coutts until her death on 21 Dec. 1878. Both Miss Burdett-Coutts's parents died within a few days of each other in January 1844, but since reaching her majority she had depended little on family counsel. From the outset Miss Burdett-Coutts, as 'the richest heiress in all England' (cf. Raikes, Journal, iv. 345), enjoyed a fame through the country second only to Queen Victoria. Her appearance in Westminster Abbey at Queen Victoria's Coronation (28 June 1838) excited enormous curiosity. Barham in his 'Mr. Barney Maguire's Account of the
