Villains, Scoundrels, and Rogues by Paul Martin

Author:Paul Martin
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781616149284
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Published: 2014-02-05T05:00:00+00:00

Hetty Green

Alone and unprotected, the gray-haired lady in the shabby black dress and frowsy bonnet marched down the derelict-filled streets of New York City’s Bowery district on a winter night in 1903. The woman seemed undaunted by the hodgepodge of saloons, brothels, tattoo parlors, and flophouses she passed along the way. Although the stern look on her face was enough to discourage most would-be muggers—she looked as if she could literally bite a nail in two—the bedraggled figure carried a revolver in her handbag just in case. To ward off the biting cold, she wore men’s long underwear. For extra insulation, she’d stuffed crumpled newspapers under her dress, a garment that hadn’t seen soap and water in ages. Climbing the steps of a ramshackle boardinghouse, she shut the door behind her and prepared to face another frigid night. To save a few precious pennies, the woman declined to pay for fuel to heat her room. Her evening meal would be the plain fare common to a poorhouse.

Most people observing the elderly woman’s hardscrabble existence would have been filled with pity. Unless, that is, they happened to know that this apparently poverty-stricken creature was, in reality, the richest woman in America. For sixty-eight-year-old Hetty Green, the first woman to earn a fortune on Wall Street, living like a pauper was a choice.1 In addition to being fabulously wealthy—rich enough to bail out the City of New York and the government of Texas during financial downturns—the woman was miserly beyond imagining. She was so niggardly that she once dressed her son in rags in an attempt to receive free medical treatment. Hetty Green’s financial success, coupled with her personal eccentricities, earned her an unflattering nickname: “The Witch of Wall Street.” There may be room for debate about whether she was a good witch or a bad witch, but this much is certain: she was the quintessential example of the remarkably stunted life that human beings can lead when their only joys are making and hoarding money.

Born Henrietta Howland Robinson in November 1834 (some sources say 1835), the future financial whiz was the daughter of accomplished businessman Edward Mott Robinson and Abby Howland Robinson, a member of a wealthy Quaker family in New Bedford, Massachusetts. (The Howlands’ Quaker belief in simplicity meant simply making money, vast sums of it.) When Hetty was not quite two, her mother gave birth to a son, although the boy soon died. Always a sickly woman, Abby Robinson was no longer able to care for her rambunctious daughter. The family sent Hetty to live with her maternal grandfather, Gideon Howland, and her maiden aunt, Sylvia Howland. Although Hetty stayed with her parents from time to time as she grew older, her relatives would play an important role in raising her and overseeing her education, which included time at a Quaker boarding school in Sandwich and a Boston finishing school.

Hetty heard the call of Wall Street as a young girl, thanks to her father and grandfather. After his marriage,

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