Description
Admire Betty Starkie, the nursery maid who whose social rise rocked High Society, but who betrayed her class origins by her ignorance about the Colosseum. She married Thomas Coutts (1735-1822), who in partnership with his brother James Coutts ran a phenomenally successful banking enterprise in the later 18th century. It survives today as RBS Coutts, delivering ‘tailored private banking and wealth management solutions’ as part of the Royal Bank of Scotland.
According to the Annual Biography and Obituary for the Year 1823, vol. 7, Thomas Coutts noticed that his brother’s child was attended by an attractive maid named Elizabeth Starkey. In her, ‘with a handsome countenance and great good humour, were united many rustic virtues, that are unfortunately not so common to domestic servants… The father of this excellent young woman was a husbandman, in Lancashire, who, upon a very small farm, had reared a large family of children in an humble, but extremely creditable way.’
‘Mr. Thomas Coutts became deeply enamoured of the aforesaid amiable and virtuous young woman, and spurning the obstacles which the very striking difference of their situations in life presented to their union, actually made proposals to her, and married her, in direct opposition, as may be believed, to the wishes of all his friends. In person, manners, and accomplishments, altogether a gentleman; as a man of business, eminent in an extraordinary degree, Mr. Coutts would, it was expected, have sought some more illustrious alliance; but he determined to please himself, and unite himself with Betty Starkey’.
The Lancashire serving-maid did well in her new role, mixing with highest echelons of the aristocracy. Her three daughters all made excellent matches. But one son-in-law, Francis Burdett, remembered that some people continued to be patronizing about her class origins. The most telling anecdote uses her ignorance of the cultural significance of an ancient Roman edifice to emphasise her lack of education. One aristocrat said that when asked her opinion of the Colosseum at Rome, she had innocently responded, ‘when furnished and whitewashed it would be a very pretty building.’
