Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/283

 in Ayrshire, to Australia. In 1879 she instituted a Flower Girls' Brigade for flower-sellers between thirteen and fifteen years of age, and simultaneously established a factory in Clerkenwell with the object of teaching crippled girls the art of artificial flower-making, while others were trained for domestic service and other work.

But the hard-working East End labouring poor, especially in Shoreditch and Bethnal Green, were always her foremost consider- ation. A night school which she established in Shoreditch in 1875 was converted into the Burdett-Coutts Club for young men and boys of the working-class, one of the first of its kind in London. A gymnasium was added in 1891, and the club is still carried on by Mr. Burdett-Coutts. At Bethnal Green she took a life-long interest in the costermonger class, and organised a club for them, and on the Columbia estate provided healthy and extensive stables for their donkeys. She was the first to institute donkey shows, with prizes for the humane treatment and good condition of the don- keys. She valued as much as anything in her great art collection a donkey in silver presented by the Costermongers' Club in 1875.

The baroness's love of animals was intense. She was long the acknowledged leader of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. As president of the ladies' committee she instituted the great scheme of essays for which many thousands of children throughout the country competed annually. She contributed largely to the prize fund, and her annual speeches to the vast audiences of children in the transept of the Crystal Palace were full of inspiration and pathos. She spoke at meetings in all parts of the country on the subject. 'Life whether in man or beast is sacred' was one of her oft-quoted sayings. Her pen was always at the service of the cause, and her letter to the Scottish Society (The Times, 5 Dec. 1873), on the ill-treatment of the Edinburgh tram-horses, is an eloquent indictment of cruelty. In 1872 she erected a handsome fountain at the corner of George IV Bridge, Edinburgh, in memory of 'Grey Friars Bobby,' the dog who refused to leave his master's grave. She provided other beautiful fountains and drinking-troughs, of which the best-known are those in Victoria Park at a cost of 5000Z. in 1862, in the Zoological Gardens in London, and in Ancoats, Manchester. She encouraged the breeding of goats largely for the benefit of poor cottagers. She became president of the British Goat Society, and her goats were famous at all shows. She distributed the young stock in distant parts of the country ; the milk was sent to hospitals. With characteristic energy and prescience she faced the housing problem in the poorer districts of London almost for the first tune. On the site of Nova Scotia Gardens in Bethnal Green, a plague spot and den of crime, she erected before the close of 1862 four blocks of model tenements, affording accommodation for over 1000 persons. The place was renamed Columbia Square. The Peabody dwelling-houses were built later on the same plan. On another plane of the housing problem, the baroness originated and carried out the idea of a garden city on her Holly Lodge estate, where she built 'Holly Village,' which provides separate residences for middle-class occupiers with the common enjoyment of open space and flower gardens.

In order to cheapen the food supply in the East End of London, Miss Burdett-Coutts embarked in 1864 on a great scheme of a market for fish and vegetables which should be free of the tolls of existing London markets. Columbia market was built at her expense on a site adjoining Columbia Square, after a private Act of Parliament was secured in 1866. The fine Gothic design had been prepared by Henry Ashley Darbishire. The cost exceeded 200,000l., and the opening ceremony was performed on 28 April 1869 (The Times, 29 April 1869). The venture proved one of Miss Burdett-Coutts's few philanthropic failures, owing to the antagonism of vested interests, but it directed attention to the public disadvantages of the pre-existing market monopolies. After vainly seeking to work the market as a wholesale fish store, she transferred it to the corporation of London on 3 Nov. 1871 ; but no better success followed, and the corporation retransferred it to her in 1874. It was reopened again in 1875 under an arrangement with three of the great railway companies, but the opposition of Billingsgate was again too strong. Later an effort was made to carry it on (1884-6) with a fleet of fishing-boats and steam carriers, and subsequently to constitute it a railway market served by all the great trunk lines, for which a new Act of Parliament was obtained. But further obstacles arose and the fine building was turned to other uses. The results of this protracted effort were at the same time far-reaching, and the methods of food distribution greatly improved both in London and in the country.