David Copperfield's great aunt. David runs away from London, when he is installed at Murdstone and Grinby's warehouse, and goes to Dover to live with Betsy. She helps David get a start in life and, when she loses her fortune, goes to London to live with David. David describes her as "A tall, hard-featured lady, but by no means ill-looking. There was an inflexibility in her face, in her voice, in her gait and carriage, amply sufficient to account for the effect she had made upon a gentle creature like my mother; but her features were rather handsome than otherwise, though unbending and austere". Dickens' friend and biographer John Forster called Betsy "a gnarled and knotted piece of female timber, sound to the core".
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