Henrietta Howland "Hetty" Green (née Robinson; November 21, 1834 – July 3, 1916),[1] nicknamed the "Witch of Wall Street", was an American businesswoman and financier known as "the richest woman in America" during the Gilded Age. Known for both her wealth and her miserliness, she was the lone woman to amass a fortune when other major financiers were men.[2]
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... After Hetty learned that Sylvia Howland had willed most of her $2 million estate (equivalent to $30,970,000 in 2015) to charity, Hetty challenged the will's validity in court by producing an earlier will which allegedly left the entire estate to Hetty, and included a clause invalidating any subsequent wills. The case, Robinson v. Mandell, which is notable as an early example of the forensic use of mathematics, was ultimately decided against Robinson after the court ruled that the clause invalidating future wills, and Sylvia's signature to it, were forgeries.[5] ,,,
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... When her cousins tried to have her indicted for forgery based on the
Robinson v. Mandell decision, the couple moved overseas to London, where they lived in the Langham Hotel. ...
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Hetty Green's stinginess was legendary. She was said never to turn on the heat or use hot water. She wore one old black dress and undergarments that she changed only after they had been worn out, did not wash her hands and rode in an old carriage. She ate mostly pies that cost fifteen cents. One tale claims that Green spent half a night searching her carriage for a lost stamp worth two cents. Another asserts that she instructed her laundress to wash only the dirtiest parts of her dresses (the hems) to save money on soap.[7]
Green conducted much of her business at the offices of the Seaboard National Bank in New York, surrounded by trunks and suitcases full of her papers; she did not want to pay rent for her own office. Later unfounded rumors claimed that she ate only oatmeal, heated on the office radiator. Possibly because of the stiff competition of the mostly male business environment and partly because of her usually dour dress (due mainly to frugality, but perhaps in part related to her Quaker upbringing), she was given the nickname "the Witch of Wall Street".[2]
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Her frugality extended to family life. When her son Ned broke his leg as a child, Hetty tried to have him admitted to a free clinic for the poor.[3] Mythic accounts have her storming away after being recognized; her biographer Slack says that she paid her bill and took her son to other doctors. His leg did not heal properly and, after years of treatment, it had to be amputated.[3]
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When her grown children left home, Green moved repeatedly among small apartments in Brooklyn Heights and Hoboken, New Jersey,[2] mainly to avoid establishing a residence permanent enough to attract the attention of tax officials in any state. In her old age, she developed a bad hernia, but refused to have an operation because it cost $150. ...
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On July 3, 1916, Hetty Green died at age 81 at her son's New York City home.[8] According to her longstanding "World's Greatest Miser" entry in the Guinness Book of World Records, she died of apoplexy after arguing with a maid over the virtues of skimmed milk. ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hetty_GreenWants to amass a fortune, even resorting to dishonest means. Doesn't want to share with anyone. Doesn't want to do any public good. Doesn't want to pay even minimal taxes. A real Repubican role model.
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