Speaker 1: Happy Saturday, everybody. We have a new show launching on
Speaker 1: our network. It's called She Makes Money Moves, and it's
Speaker 1: hosted by Glamour Editor in chief Samantha Berry. It is
Speaker 1: all about money, like its name suggests, especially how money
Speaker 1: relates to women, and to go along with that theme,
Speaker 1: Today's classic episode is our August episode on Hetty Green.
Speaker 1: She was one of the wealthiest women in the United
Speaker 1: States in her day, but her eccentric behavior and her
Speaker 1: reputation as a miser led her to being disparagingly called
Speaker 1: the Witch of Wall Street. Tune in for a peeka
Speaker 1: She Makes Money Moves. At the end of today's episode.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, We'll welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm from and I'm Tracy Vie Wilson
Speaker 1: and um So, there's the stereotype. We talked about it
Speaker 1: a little bit in our math episode, in our episode
Speaker 1: about algebra about women lacking mathematical proclivity and not having
Speaker 1: much business sense. But those stereotypes were completely obliterated by
Speaker 1: today's topic, and in the mid eighteen hundreds before many
Speaker 1: people were talking about obliterating those stereotypes. She was seen
Speaker 1: as a peer and an equal to many of wall streets,
Speaker 1: you know, heaviest hitting financiers, and she really opened the
Speaker 1: door to the idea that women could succeed in finance.
Speaker 1: But despite her immense success and these really admirable accomplishments,
Speaker 1: it's kind of difficult to like heavy green Um who
Speaker 1: is who we're talking about today. And as is often
Speaker 1: the case with people who are extremely driven or really
Speaker 1: gifted in one way or in one area, the areas
Speaker 1: outside of her uh life that fell outside of like
Speaker 1: finance and building her fortune really often suffered. And that
Speaker 1: included her family, which is part of why it's kind
Speaker 1: of hard to like her. And we'll we'll get to
Speaker 1: a specific incident as we go on, But she's sort
Speaker 1: of fascinating in that regard. She's one of those people
Speaker 1: that you can't help but be fascinated by. But there
Speaker 1: is a certain sort of like, I don't know if
Speaker 1: revulsion is the right word, but there's a you can't
Speaker 1: help but wins a little bit at some of the
Speaker 1: things that happened in her life because of her obsession
Speaker 1: with building the family fortune. Uh. So we will kick
Speaker 1: it off and start just at the beginning, as we
Speaker 1: usually do with her early childhood and her birth and
Speaker 1: her family. Hetty was born Henrietta Howland Robinson on November
Speaker 1: twenty one, eighteen thirty four, in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Her
Speaker 1: mother was Abby Holland, who could trace her family directly
Speaker 1: back to the Mayflower, and her father was Edward Mott Robinson.
Speaker 1: And Hetty's mother is uh said to have been quite
Speaker 1: dismayed that she did not have a son to be
Speaker 1: an heir to the family fortune. Uh and so she
Speaker 1: also sent Hetty to live with her grandfather when she
Speaker 1: was still a very small child, import in part because
Speaker 1: Abby was in very poor health, so Hetty was not
Speaker 1: terribly close to her mother. As a result, Hetty spent
Speaker 1: most of her childhood with the men in the family,
Speaker 1: and she learned about business and money management from her
Speaker 1: father and her grandfather. The two of them were partners
Speaker 1: in a whaling company which did quite well. Her father
Speaker 1: was an excellent and astute businessman who said to have
Speaker 1: increased the family's fiscal fortunes twentyfold, and right out of
Speaker 1: the gate, Hetty was really into money as a concept.
Speaker 1: She opened her first savings account when she was only
Speaker 1: eight years old. Uh, and two years after that she
Speaker 1: was sent to boarding school, although she wasn't terribly interested
Speaker 1: in it. She talks in interviews about how she um
Speaker 1: kind of like went ahead and like trudged through, but
Speaker 1: she didn't really like it. Uh and soon she was
Speaker 1: really uh back with her male elders, reading the financial
Speaker 1: pages at her and feeling like she was getting a
Speaker 1: much better education in that regard. One of the stories
Speaker 1: about her is that her father set her up with
Speaker 1: a whole new, expensive wardrobe for her formal society presentation,
Speaker 1: but she sold all of her new clothes and instead
Speaker 1: invested the money and Hetty's mother passed away when uh
Speaker 1: when the heiress Hetty was only twenty five and her
Speaker 1: newly single father decided to move to New York for
Speaker 1: from Connecticut, and Hetty followed because you know, at this
Speaker 1: point in his life, even though he was a little
Speaker 1: bit older, he was still considered an eligible bachelor as
Speaker 1: a widower. H. And there's some pretty significant speculation that
Speaker 1: Hetty's motivation for following her father was to ensure that
Speaker 1: she was not forgotten and left out of the family
Speaker 1: fortune in the event that he remarried. And started a
Speaker 1: new family. When her father and her aunt both died
Speaker 1: in the same year, Hetty, who was thirty one at
Speaker 1: the time, was poised to inherit the family fortune. The
Speaker 1: general opinion of her male relatives was that she would
Speaker 1: have been better off with her money in a trust
Speaker 1: and with a male relative managing things, and all of
Speaker 1: that had been arranged for in the wills for both
Speaker 1: of the wills in question. Yes, she actually was not
Speaker 1: given as much in her aunt's will as she had hoped. Uh,
Speaker 1: And that comes up a little bit more in just
Speaker 1: a bit. But as a woman, you know, in the
Speaker 1: mid eighteen hundreds, even though she had grown up with
Speaker 1: these two men who were really quite established financiers and
Speaker 1: quite good at handling money, and they had talked with
Speaker 1: her a great deal about it, she was still perceived
Speaker 1: as just being unable to handle the demands of managing
Speaker 1: any sort of wealth. But Henny was very headstrong. She
Speaker 1: was very confident in her abilities to handle her own fortune.
Speaker 1: You know, she'd been keeping accounts for her father, and
Speaker 1: she had been reading stock quotes to her grandfather every
Speaker 1: night from the paper since she was a very young child.
Speaker 1: And so she mounted a lawsuit against the trustees of
Speaker 1: her father's will, and she actually took legal action to
Speaker 1: break her will uh, which was a newer version than
Speaker 1: the one she said she had last seen. She did
Speaker 1: manage to wrangle a million dollars of her father's fortune
Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty five, and later on she procured part
Speaker 1: of her aunt's estate. Eventually, after much arguing and litigation,
Speaker 1: she reached an income arrangement from a trust and she
Speaker 1: ended up with somewhere between six million dollars and seven
Speaker 1: million dollars between the two estates. That's not adjusted to
Speaker 1: today's value though, that is eighteen sixties dollars, So it
Speaker 1: was a really really huge fortune. Yeah, she she had
Speaker 1: plenty of money. I mean, it's one of those things
Speaker 1: where even you know today obviously if someone had six
Speaker 1: million dollars to be in pretty good shapes, So you
Speaker 1: can imagine a hundred and fifty years ago when that
Speaker 1: was like uh. And as all of this legal back
Speaker 1: and forth over her inheritance was dragging on, particularly the
Speaker 1: stuff with her aunt's will, Hetty actually got married. She
Speaker 1: Edward Henry Green, and this was in eighteen sixty seven
Speaker 1: and Hetty was thirty three at the time, Green was
Speaker 1: a silk trader and he served on the board of
Speaker 1: a bank, but his business and Hetty's did not mingle.
Speaker 1: The pair never combined their finances, which, as you can imagine,
Speaker 1: was pretty unheard of at the time, and in fact,
Speaker 1: Green had to sign a prenup agreeing that he would
Speaker 1: keep his hands off Hetty's money, which pre nup arrangements
Speaker 1: of some sort or another have actually been around for
Speaker 1: hundreds and hundreds of years, but in my mind this
Speaker 1: sticks out as one of the earliest sort of modern
Speaker 1: UH pre nup arrangements. For a while, the two of
Speaker 1: them moved to England and they stayed there for seven years,
Speaker 1: and this was a move that they made to escape
Speaker 1: some of the bad press that Hetty had gotten while
Speaker 1: she was contesting her aunt's will. She had a previous
Speaker 1: version of the will that had named her as the
Speaker 1: sole inheritor, and there was the scandal over the fact
Speaker 1: that people sort of believed it was a forged document
Speaker 1: that he had made for herself. Yeah, and this you know,
Speaker 1: caused also some legal heat which helped move them right
Speaker 1: along to UH England, and they actually had their first
Speaker 1: child while they were living in London. His name was
Speaker 1: Edward Howland Robinson Green, and that was in eighteen sixty eight,
Speaker 1: so just a year after their marriage, uh. And then
Speaker 1: three years later, still in London, they had a daughter
Speaker 1: named Hetty Sylvia and Howland Robinson Green, and she went
Speaker 1: by Sylvia as she grew up. The two of them
Speaker 1: and their children lived very well while they were in London,
Speaker 1: and all of their living expenses came out of Edwards money.
Speaker 1: So there had been a financial panic in eighteen seventy three.
Speaker 1: And not long after that, just a couple of years later,
Speaker 1: the Greens moved back to the US. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: the the concerns had died down over the legal document
Speaker 1: and whether there had been any foul play involved, and
Speaker 1: so they settled in Vermont, where Edward was originally from.
Speaker 1: And it was not long before Hetty marched right to street.
Speaker 1: She made a pilgrimage to New York and she went
Speaker 1: into John Jay Cisco and Sons to deposit cash and
Speaker 1: stock certificates. And she was ready to start investing with
Speaker 1: that money right then. And with her separate and independent fortune,
Speaker 1: Hetty invested very very wisely, instead of focusing on fast
Speaker 1: cash investments that would build up her fortune really quickly,
Speaker 1: hett he opted for long term investments. She primarily invested
Speaker 1: in bonds and real estate. She also invested in the railroads,
Speaker 1: and she bought real estate primarily in Chicago, New York,
Speaker 1: and St. Louis. As her fortune grew, she also expanded
Speaker 1: her holdings well beyond these cities, and all of her
Speaker 1: money handling every move she made was really well informed.
Speaker 1: She did copious amounts of research on her own before
Speaker 1: she put her money behind anything. And it wasn't just
Speaker 1: that she was a patient investor. She was also really frugal.
Speaker 1: Even though she had at this point had amassed a
Speaker 1: massive fortune, she lived really simply. She didn't have a
Speaker 1: lavish lifestyle at all, and as a consequence, she always
Speaker 1: had money, and when there were dips in the market
Speaker 1: or panics, she really didn't have to worry about it.
Speaker 1: She could just expand her fortune further instead of worrying
Speaker 1: about getting by day to day. Until the crisis passed,
Speaker 1: she loaned money and purchased real estate on the cheap
Speaker 1: from desperate sellers. And when the financial panics caused many
Speaker 1: investment firms to declare bankruptcy because of their huge debt,
Speaker 1: Hetty who had never borrowed money as a rule, always
Speaker 1: stayed on solid ground. And before we get to kind
Speaker 1: of her obsession with investing in money and expanding her wealth,
Speaker 1: uh kind of ramping up. Do you want to take
Speaker 1: a word from our sponsor? Sure? And so now back
Speaker 1: to Hetty. Uh. So she is at this point in
Speaker 1: New York. She has really uh entrenched herself in this
Speaker 1: lifestyle of trading and buying. And it seems as the uh,
Speaker 1: as her money management continued to take off and it
Speaker 1: took up more and more of her time, she grew
Speaker 1: less and less interested in taking care of herself. Uh.
Speaker 1: She seemed to have just become so obsessed with her
Speaker 1: work in finance that everything else kind of fell away
Speaker 1: from her focus. Her clothes would go unwashed, they would
Speaker 1: eventually fall into ragged disrepair, and she would continue to
Speaker 1: wear them. She often looked very grubby, so much so
Speaker 1: that merchants are said to have winced when she entered
Speaker 1: their stores. They dreaded her dirty hands touching their merchandise.
Speaker 1: I mean, she would even purchase broken cookies at the
Speaker 1: store so she could get a discount for them, and
Speaker 1: she would return barry boxes to the market so she
Speaker 1: could get a refund on them. So she was living
Speaker 1: very frugally, very very cheaply, but she really wasn't taking
Speaker 1: great care of herself. When she finally did relent and
Speaker 1: take her clothes to the cleaners, she said to have
Speaker 1: insisted that they only washed the bottoms of the skirts
Speaker 1: so just to take away the obvious mud and dirt,
Speaker 1: and she would negotiate a reduced price for the partial cleaning.
Speaker 1: And her children. This is the part that really breaks
Speaker 1: my heart. Uh you know, her children had the wealthiest
Speaker 1: woman in America for a mother, but they wore hand
Speaker 1: me downs. They looked like, you know, ragamuffins and poppers
Speaker 1: from like a Dickens novel. H It said that as
Speaker 1: their winter clothes were thin, she would line them with
Speaker 1: newspapers rather than spend money on new coats and shoes
Speaker 1: would get the same treatment. So if the kids had
Speaker 1: holes in their souls, she would patch them cheaply or
Speaker 1: just line them with paper, uh to so that the
Speaker 1: hole wasn't completely open. Her tight fistedness with her money
Speaker 1: really cost her son dearly. So when Ned, as he
Speaker 1: was known, hurt his leg while he was sledding, Hetty
Speaker 1: put off getting a medical treatment for him because she
Speaker 1: didn't want to get a bill from the doctor, and consequently,
Speaker 1: his leg never healed correctly and it finally had to
Speaker 1: be amputated because he developed gang green. So the nickname
Speaker 1: the Witch of Wall Street came from the way Hetty
Speaker 1: carried herself in public. As a woman, she was often
Speaker 1: confronted with people who thought that they could take advantage
Speaker 1: of her, and one of the ways that she dealt
Speaker 1: with that was by being really shrewd and abrupt in
Speaker 1: her behavior. She was very direct and very cautious in
Speaker 1: all of her dealings. And additionally, she wore solid black
Speaker 1: most of the time, and she wore wore clothes that
Speaker 1: were a little bit outdated. Again, she didn't like to
Speaker 1: buy new clothes, so she would kind of be out
Speaker 1: of season in these older, you know, dusty looking things.
Speaker 1: So you could see where people would start calling her
Speaker 1: a witch based on, you know, sort of the depictions
Speaker 1: of witches at the time. And it's all I said
Speaker 1: that she did not really have a great personal smell,
Speaker 1: which is not really a huge leap of logic given
Speaker 1: accounts of her less than stellar hygiene. Because she was
Speaker 1: this enigmatic and unusual figure lots of rumors circulated about her.
Speaker 1: One of these was that she was so miserly that
Speaker 1: she only had one dress. As we've already mentioned, she
Speaker 1: definitely did have a penny pinching streak about her. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there's a story in biography that was written about her,
Speaker 1: and the way the story goes is that she was
Speaker 1: carrying two hundred thousand dollars in bonds on public transportation.
Speaker 1: And again that is not adjusted. That is two thousand
Speaker 1: dollars in eighteen sixties money, or this may have been
Speaker 1: a little bit later, but uh. And when someone insinuated, like, hey,
Speaker 1: that's not really wise to carry that much wealth on
Speaker 1: public transportation, she insisted that she could not afford to
Speaker 1: hire a private carriage as they were suggesting, and that
Speaker 1: if they can, that's great for them, but she couldn't.
Speaker 1: Just kind of funny, you know, it's like the person
Speaker 1: sitting there with a pile of money in their laps
Speaker 1: saying they can't afford a taxi. In another story, she
Speaker 1: lived with a hernia for years rather than going to
Speaker 1: the doctor to have it looked at, and she only
Speaker 1: went once the pain became really unbearable, and then she
Speaker 1: was infuriated that the surgery was going to cost a
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty dollars. She only agreed to it because
Speaker 1: she was in so much pain, and allegedly she then
Speaker 1: tried to get away without paying the bill to the doctor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's another rumor that went around that she had a
Speaker 1: man's brain in a woman's body, and in all likelihood
Speaker 1: that was not intended to be taken literally by you know,
Speaker 1: a person who initially said it. It was one of
Speaker 1: those you know, uh, just kind of off handed comments.
Speaker 1: This tidbit kind of slid into the rumor mill, and
Speaker 1: people believed it as though it were a real thing
Speaker 1: and not sort of just a commentary on her shrewdness
Speaker 1: and her acumen in business. And it just added to
Speaker 1: that which mystique that you know, she's sort of almost
Speaker 1: Frankenstein character that has you know, male thinking in a
Speaker 1: woman's body. But there's also a tinge of sexism in
Speaker 1: the nickname. Clearly, a woman who could amass so much
Speaker 1: of a fortune and stand toe to toe with men
Speaker 1: when it came to making deals had to be a sorceress.
Speaker 1: Yet her odd and unsettling demeanor really didn't help. The
Speaker 1: press picked up the name, and they started using the
Speaker 1: Witch of Wall Street anytime they reported any financial news
Speaker 1: involving her. And she was really worth reporting about. So
Speaker 1: a lot of men on Wall Street and elsewhere we're
Speaker 1: just really happy to be insulting about Hetty. And some
Speaker 1: of these same men were the ones appealing to her
Speaker 1: for loans and fiscal assistance when they ran into a crisis.
Speaker 1: This was the case throughout her life. She's said to
Speaker 1: have saved the city of New York on several occasions
Speaker 1: when the city's coffers ran dry, and she even wrote
Speaker 1: a check for one point one million dollars in the
Speaker 1: nineteens of a Knickerbocker crisis as part of the emergency
Speaker 1: bank bailout that was headed up by JP Morgan. Yeah,
Speaker 1: people would just say horrible things about her and kind
Speaker 1: of snicker behind her back, but boy, they were really
Speaker 1: happy to take her money when they needed it. Uh,
Speaker 1: as is often the case. Uh. And so while Hetty
Speaker 1: was having these spectacular successes in finance, her husband unfortunately
Speaker 1: was not. Uh. He had been making investments through the
Speaker 1: years just as his wife had, but he just did
Speaker 1: not have her skill at picking winners. And really, like
Speaker 1: you know, assembling a cohesive portfolio that was all smart moves,
Speaker 1: and the two million dollars that he had entered their
Speaker 1: marriage with had slowly dwindled down until it was mostly gone. Unsurprisingly,
Speaker 1: a husband who could not manage his own money was
Speaker 1: of no interest to Hetty, despite the fact that he
Speaker 1: was from a good family and by all accounts was
Speaker 1: a kind and affable man. She had already bailed him
Speaker 1: out several times, and once she had to pull all
Speaker 1: of our money out of the bank to avoid it
Speaker 1: being seized to cover his debts, and at that point
Speaker 1: enough was enough, and so in one after fourteen years
Speaker 1: of marriage, she took the children and she moved to
Speaker 1: New York. She kept the desk in an office on
Speaker 1: Wall Street, incidentally in the bank where she moved her
Speaker 1: money after the incident with Edwards debt collectors caused her
Speaker 1: to leave her previous bank. She brought her lunch of
Speaker 1: oatmeal or a plain ham sandwich with her every day,
Speaker 1: and because she wasn't exactly enthusiastic about paying taxes on
Speaker 1: the property she owned, she and the children never had
Speaker 1: a consistent home. The three of them moved around a
Speaker 1: lot to dodge debt collectors, and they stayed in cheap
Speaker 1: flats over the years all over the city. They spent
Speaker 1: time in Hoboken, the Bowery, Harlem, and Brooklyn. Anywhere that
Speaker 1: Hetty could find a deal on a cold water flat
Speaker 1: with a low weekly rate, she would use aliases that
Speaker 1: most of them sometimes even registering under her dog's name. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're They're debate over what the actual name of her
Speaker 1: dog was, and it could just be that there were
Speaker 1: multiple dogs. Some will list him as Dewey. Some even
Speaker 1: list him as Money being his name, which to me
Speaker 1: sounds a little urban legend. E uh, and I think
Speaker 1: there's another name in the mix. But in any case,
Speaker 1: her dog rented some flats for her. Ned her son,
Speaker 1: went to Fordham and he pursued a law degree, and
Speaker 1: Hetty had always had in mind that he was going
Speaker 1: to be the one that managed the family fortune after her,
Speaker 1: and so after he graduated, she gave him a job
Speaker 1: managing some of her properties in Chicago, and he did
Speaker 1: quite well there, and so she eventually moved him to
Speaker 1: Texas to see after interests there. His life away from
Speaker 1: his mother gave Ned a little taste of freedom. He
Speaker 1: started to like more extravagant living, and he did have
Speaker 1: several dalliances with some ladies. We can say they had
Speaker 1: negotiable affections. That's a perfect way to put it. Hetty
Speaker 1: was afraid that he would end up married to a
Speaker 1: man who was only after the family fortune, so she
Speaker 1: begged Ned to promise her he would never get married.
Speaker 1: He acquiesced, although his mistress, who was a former prostitute,
Speaker 1: stayed with him and the pair lived as though they
Speaker 1: were married to each other. Ned was eventually moved back
Speaker 1: to New York by his mother to see after the business,
Speaker 1: and unlike his mother, who still insisted on living in
Speaker 1: cheap rental flats, he lived for a little while at
Speaker 1: the Waldorf Astoria, and then he and his mistress moved
Speaker 1: to adjoining townhouses near Central Park. And while Ned did
Speaker 1: not share his mother's taste in lodging or lifestyle, he
Speaker 1: really did inherit her business acumen, and he proved himself
Speaker 1: to be extremely adept at managing the family fortune. Neddie
Speaker 1: and Edward's daughter, Sylvia, stayed unmarried and stayed with her
Speaker 1: mother until she was thirty nine. At that point, she
Speaker 1: married Matthew Astor Wilkes, who was the great grandchild of
Speaker 1: John Jacob asked her. The first Wilkes was in his sixties,
Speaker 1: so he was much older than Sylvia. But hett he
Speaker 1: approved of the marriage because he had family money of
Speaker 1: his own and promised that he would never touch Sylvia's. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it said that Hetty didn't really like uh Matthew, but
Speaker 1: she liked that he was willing to stay out of
Speaker 1: her family's money. Uh. And Sylvia's wedding is often pointed
Speaker 1: to you as one of the few times that Hetty
Speaker 1: kind of loosened her purse strings. She paid for the wedding,
Speaker 1: and it said, uh. And it said that she was
Speaker 1: much more fiscally indulgent in the whole affair than just
Speaker 1: about any other time she was in her life. And
Speaker 1: prior to Sylvia meeting Matthew, Hetty had also paid to
Speaker 1: host several dinners uh like places at the plaza so
Speaker 1: that her daughter could invite eligible men and they could
Speaker 1: have these sort of social events. Uh. And all of
Speaker 1: this was really because Hetty had been quite concerned that
Speaker 1: Sylvia wasn't married. And this sounds sort of a little
Speaker 1: ironic given what a fiercely independent him and Hetty herself was,
Speaker 1: But even so, she had been married, and she seemed
Speaker 1: to think that it was important for a woman to
Speaker 1: marry at some point. Hetty died on July third, nineteen sixteen,
Speaker 1: at her son's town house. She had gotten six several
Speaker 1: years before with pneumonia, and at that point the papers
Speaker 1: had reported that the Witch of Wall Street was really
Speaker 1: at death's door, but she defied them and recovered. The
Speaker 1: illness left her pretty frail, though, and she wasn't able
Speaker 1: to work anymore afterward, So she moved in with her
Speaker 1: son and insisted that she pay him rent, but no
Speaker 1: more than she would have paid at the more modest
Speaker 1: lodgings she would normally have gotten for herself, and eventually
Speaker 1: after falling into gradually poorer and poorer health. Uh she
Speaker 1: had had that that initial pneumonia that caused the death
Speaker 1: scare when she was in her late seventies. I believe
Speaker 1: she was seventy seven, and then as she was approaching
Speaker 1: her eighty second birthday, she had a series of paralytic strokes,
Speaker 1: and so she died just a few weeks before her birthday.
Speaker 1: When she died, she left behind a fortune of more
Speaker 1: than a hundred million dollars, which she acquired over the
Speaker 1: fifty one years that she had worked. She owned about
Speaker 1: six thousand pieces of property across forty eight states. And
Speaker 1: she held the deeds to theaters, railroads, hotels, office buildings,
Speaker 1: and cemeteries. And she held the mortgages for more than
Speaker 1: five hundred churches. Yeah, and again that is not an
Speaker 1: adjusted amount. That was a hundred million in the nineteen
Speaker 1: teens when she died. So I have seen various adjustment
Speaker 1: estimates that are wildly different, some that put her in
Speaker 1: the low billions, uh if that were today's money, and
Speaker 1: some that put her like in the tens of billions.
Speaker 1: So it's a pretty wide range. But basically she would
Speaker 1: have been a billionaire if if this was in today's
Speaker 1: uh fiscal measuring. And so then ned inherited a big
Speaker 1: chunk of the money, and unlike his mother, he took
Speaker 1: that money and he lived big. He was still you know,
Speaker 1: doing his job as a financier. But he spent plenty
Speaker 1: of that money. He married his mistress that he had
Speaker 1: promised his mother he would never marry, although it is
Speaker 1: said that he also had dalliances with other women. Uh.
Speaker 1: And he spent a huge chunk of money building mammoth
Speaker 1: mansions in multiple places, and he staffed all of them
Speaker 1: with a full complement of servants. He kind of made
Speaker 1: up for all the lost time that they lived very
Speaker 1: poorly as children. And he gave a lot of money
Speaker 1: to charity, and he also funded several scientific research projects.
Speaker 1: He did some work with M I. T. And let
Speaker 1: them even use some of his property to to do
Speaker 1: some of their experiments. Ned died in nineteen thirty seven,
Speaker 1: and at that point the estate went to Sylvia, who
Speaker 1: was already a widow. She in turn left the entire
Speaker 1: lot to various charities, so all that money that Hetty
Speaker 1: had spent her life hoarding eventually was given away. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's one of those moments where you're you feel reasonably
Speaker 1: confident that if she could, she was probably rolling in
Speaker 1: her grave. Uh. But it's interesting to note. I mean,
Speaker 1: she gets these this almost caricature grade description in anything
Speaker 1: you read about her. That's why, Uh, I'm almost reluctant
Speaker 1: to ever say anything with certainty about her, because it
Speaker 1: seems like every report of her is colored by sort
Speaker 1: of the press and this weird image that she had.
Speaker 1: But I want to wrap up with a quote from
Speaker 1: Hetty herself that I think is really telling and it
Speaker 1: it kind of uh pulls the whole thing together and
Speaker 1: reminds us that yes, she was a very extreme person
Speaker 1: with some very extreme behaviors, but she was still a
Speaker 1: person and she uh she said this in response to
Speaker 1: criticisms and bad press about her uh. And you know,
Speaker 1: this is a woman who was listed in the Guinness
Speaker 1: Book of Records as the world's greatest miser. But this
Speaker 1: quote goes my life is written down for me in
Speaker 1: Wall Street by people who I assume do not care
Speaker 1: to know one iota of the real Hetty Green. I
Speaker 1: am in earnest. Therefore they picture me as heartless. I
Speaker 1: go my own way. I take no partner, risk nobody
Speaker 1: else's fortune. Therefore I am madam Ishmael set against every man.
Speaker 1: So that's Hitty Green. Thank you so much for joining
Speaker 1: us on this Saturday. If you have heard an email
Speaker 1: address or a Facebook you are l or something similar
Speaker 1: over the course of today's episode, since it is from
Speaker 1: the archive that might be out of date now, you
Speaker 1: can email us at History Podcast at how stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com, and you can find us all over social
Speaker 1: media at missed in History, and you can subscribe to
Speaker 1: our show on Apple podcasts, Google podcast, the I heart
Speaker 1: Radio app, and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Stuffy
Speaker 1: Miss Industry Class is a production of I Heart Radio's
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows. I was one serious emergency
Speaker 1: away from being completely broke. What would happen is my
Speaker 1: money would just sort of sit in my savings and
Speaker 1: nothing would be done with it. We wanted to enjoy
Speaker 1: certain things in life and not be stressed living paychecks
Speaker 1: a paycheck. I do remember having nights where I was
Speaker 1: up at night worrying about where my paychecks were coming
Speaker 1: from when they were coming in. I'm Samantha Barry, theater
Speaker 1: in chief of Glamor and the host of She Makes
Speaker 1: Money Moves. I believe there's power, especially for young women,
Speaker 1: in talking about money, how much we make, how much
Speaker 1: we spend, and how money impacts our identities and our relationships.
Speaker 1: Consider this your invitation to join the conversation. You'll hear
Speaker 1: from women across the country who shared their honest, unscripted
Speaker 1: stories their salaries. I made about thirty dollars their struggles.
Speaker 1: Clearly we're not going to be able to afford to
Speaker 1: keep the house, and the lessons they've learned along the way,
Speaker 1: and eventually my credit cards just got maxed out, and
Speaker 1: it was almost like I didn't know when that even happened.
Speaker 1: There be highs. I think I saved my first hundred
Speaker 1: thousand when I was twenty eight. There'll be loads, so
Speaker 1: you mean to tell me our mortgage was not paid
Speaker 1: and you went shopping. And there will also be advice
Speaker 1: from financial experts helping to guide these women and women
Speaker 1: everywhere towards a better financial future. I'll say this first
Speaker 1: and foremost, it is your younger self job to look
Speaker 1: after your older self. I don't think you should break
Speaker 1: up a someone just because they said I have a
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars in student loan time. Money is the
Speaker 1: ultimate taboo topic, and we're more comfortable getting physically naked
Speaker 1: with somebody than financially naked. She makes Money moves from
Speaker 1: Glamor and I Heart Radio premiers on Apple podcasts, that
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio app or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows. Subscribe now to join us as we help
Speaker 1: women raise their voices and make money moves Who can't
Speaker 1: afford to miss it. Oh, my dad's gonna be so
Speaker 1: ashamed of me when this airsh