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Henrietta (Hetty) Green was a very spoilt, only child. She was born in
Massachusetts, USA, in 1835. Her father was a millionaire
businessman. Her mother was often ill, and so from the age of two
her father took her with him to work and taught her about stocks
and shares. At the age of six she started reading the daily financial
newspapers and she opened her own bank account.
Her father died when she was 21 and she inherited $7.5 million.
She went to New York and invested on Wall Street. Hetty saved
every penny, eating in the cheapest restaurants for 15 cents. She
became one of the richest and most hated women in the world. She
was called ‘The Witch of Wall Street’. At 33 she married Edward
Green, a multi-millionaire, and had two children, Ned and Sylvia.
Hetty’s meanness was legendary. She always argued about prices
in shops. She walked to the local grocery store to buy broken
cookies (biscuits) which were much cheaper, and to get a free bone
for her much-loved dog, Dewey. Once she lost a two-cent stamp and
spent the night looking for it. She never bought clothes and always
wore the same long, ragged black skirt. Worst of all, when her son
Ned fell and injured his knee, she refused to pay for a doctor and
spent hours looking for free medical help. In the end Ned’s leg was
amputated. When she died in 1916 she left her children $100 million (worth
$9.3 billion today). Her daughter built a hospital with her money.
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