Jane Peat

Jane, Lady Peat (c.1751—26 November 1842) was an English miser, eccentric and kleptomaniac, and the estranged wife of Sir Robert Peat.

Born Jane Smith, the only child of Mathew and Jane Smith (née Taylor), she was baptised at the Jesuit chapel in Durham on 23 April 1751. Her father was a local squire who lived at Herrington House, East Herrington, in Sunderland and was a landowner of estates in County Durham. The family were recusants and distantly related to the Smythe baronets, making Maria Fitzherbert (the mistress of George IV) her kinswoman.

Miser and thief Little else is known of Jane's early life until she and her father appear in a record of 1786 (she then aged about 35). They travelled home on horseback along a turnpike road and, on arriving at the turnpike gate at West Rainton, argued with the gatekeeper that they had no need to pay the toll, having already passed through it that same morning. Mathew and Jane then rode off. Knowing their story to be untrue, the gatekeeper brought action against them, and the court found they had been in Barnard Castle (25 miles away) for several days. They were fined £10 each (about £1,155 in 2014) for avoiding the toll.

Jane's father died in 1793, and she inherited his estates and the family home of Herrington House. After the Duty on Hair Powder Act was made law in 1795, she was found to have failed to obtain a certificate for the use of her hair powder, summoned to court and fined £40 (about £3,690 in 2014).

When Jane was informed and arrived back at her ruined house, she is said to have raked through the embers, gathering any old nails, hinges, bolts and locks and laid them in a pile to sell for old iron. To save money on lodgings for the night, she is then said to have lain on the old box and covered herself with the horse cloth that once covered her maid. Peat had tried to introduce his wife to fashionable society in London, but on finding she had slipped away from the guests and was found talking to the servants in the kitchen, he thought her seemingly unfit for it and returned her to Sunderland. He lived apart from her at his vicarage in New Brentford and visited her just twice a year. On hearing the news, Lady Peat is said to have "bought a new dress of bright yellow cotton, and a bonnet, a feather, and ribbons to match" and walked the streets of Sunderland celebrating his death. She was buried in the Smith family crypt at St Michael's, Houghton-le-Spring on 1 December. Dying childless, she bequeathed her main estates in County Durham to her godson John Leadbitter of Bird Hill, near Whickham, who received Flass Hall, and her cousin Edward Taylor of Crook, who received Colepike and Hedley Hope. Both added the Smith name to their surnames and quartered their coat of arms with those of Smith in accordance with a clause in her will. Flass Hall had previously been rented by the astronomer-cleric Temple Chevallier, but Leadbitter chose to live there himself once he inherited it, causing Chevallier to have a new parsonage built for himself.

At a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne in 1858, the chairman gave an anecdote of Lady Peat having ridden in the boot of a stagecoach and on inside fare being demanded, she is said to have replied "No; I have come as luggage and must be paid for as luggage."

In 2009 a stone sculpture of four stacked stone discs, representing the hoarding of money, was installed in Herrington Park, near the former site of Herrington House, with the words: