page_title: Jane Peat
section_title: Death and legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Jane Peat / Death and legacy
caption_attribution_description: English: Coin sculpture Herrington Park
context_page_description: Jane, Lady Peat 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, 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, near Sunderland and was a landowner of estates in County Durham. The family were recusants and distantly related to the Smythe baronets, making Maria Fitzherbert her kinswoman.
context_section_description: Sir Robert died at his vicarage in New Brentford on 20 April 1837, aged 65. 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.
  Lady Peat died on 26 November 1842 at Sunderland, aged about 91 or 92. 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 rode 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:
  Take heed from Lady Jane Peat, miser of Herrington (1750–1842)
  And Isabella Young her maid, murdered in 1815
  Money is a good servant but a bad master – a quote attributed to Francis Bacon
caption: A sculpture representing Jane's hoarding of money and commemorating the murder of her servant girl, was installed in Herrington Park in 2009.
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