At age 66, she married her much younger secretary William Ashmead-Bartlett, an act that caused public controversy and financial complications.
On 12 February 1881, Angela Burdett-Coutts married William Lehman Ashmead Bartlett, an American-born man 37 years her junior who had served as her secretary. The marriage caused considerable public scandal and controversy, as many viewed the age gap and the groom's more modest background with suspicion regarding his motives.
The union also triggered a financial penalty: under the terms of her inheritance from Harriot Mellon, marrying a foreign-born man meant Angela forfeited three-fifths of her income from the Coutts fortune. Despite this, she proceeded with the marriage, and her husband took the name Burdett-Coutts.
Her husband later became a Member of Parliament, and the couple remained married until her death in 1906. The marriage represents an important, if controversial, personal chapter that illustrates the tension Victorian society felt when a powerful, independently wealthy woman made an unconventional personal choice against public expectation.
Despite the scandal, Angela continued her philanthropic work vigorously in the following decades, demonstrating that the marriage did not diminish her commitment to public service, even as it altered her financial circumstances.