Definition of "landlady"

In a large bedroom upstairs, the window of which was thickly curtained with a great woollen shawl lately discarded by the landlady, Mrs. Rolliver, were gathered on this evening nearly a dozen persons, all seeking vinous bliss; all old inhabitants of the nearer end of Marlott, and frequenters of this retreat.

1891, Thomas Hardy, chapter IV, in Tess of the d’Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented […], volume I, London: James R[ipley] Osgood, McIlvaine and Co., […], phase the first (The Maiden), pages 40–41

Yet Clacton, like every other station at a big seaside resort, is bedevilled by the traditional insistence of boarding-house landladies that their clients must arrive on Saturday before lunch and leave on Saturday after breakfast.

1959 April, B. Perren, “The Essex Coast Branches of the Great Eastern Line”, in Trains Illustrated, page 191