Martin Fone's Blog

Henrietta Howland “Hetty” Green (1834 –1916)

This series is about eccentricity. Just to prove that eccentricity is neither a male preserve or, despite Voltaire’s assertion, a peculiarly English trait, we will shine our light on Hetty Green, whose behaviour earned her the unflattering sobriquet, the Witch of Wall Street. She was a successful investor, amassing over her career a fortune of over one hundred million dollars of liquid assets, at a time when financiers were almost exclusively male and were generally making a poor fist of it.

Perhaps Hetty is the epitome of that old saying, look after the cents and the dollars will look after themselves. She was notorious for her parsimony. Some of the tales about her are the stuff of urban legend but what we can be certain of is that she cut a rather striking, and dare I say, smelly dash. Hetty only owned one dress at a time which started its life out as black and would over time take on a green or brown hue as it got dirtier. She would order her laundress to only wash the bottom of her dress – after all, she surmised, this was the part that got dirty and to launder the whole garment would be time-consuming and an unnecessary expense. Rather disconcertingly, Hetty would wait in her petticoats until the laundress had finished her work.

Whilst in New York, she was a habitue of Pie Alley where the meal of the day cost just fifteen cents. When out shopping, she would walk (natch), buy broken biscuits rather than whole ones as they were cheaper and carry a can to get the cheapest priced milk for her cat. Her dog did not miss out – Hetty would use her negotiating skills to persuade the poor shopkeeper to throw in a bone gratis for the honour of receiving her patronage. It was usual for shops to offer money back if you returned the box in which your goods were packed. Of course, Hetty took full advantage of this largesse.

Life at home was spartan. Hetty would not heat the place up or use hot water. She is reputed to have eaten her oatmeal cold, because it saved the cost of heating the stuff. Despite being a successful investor, Hetty would not incur the cost of renting her own office. Instead she would take up residence in the offices of the Seaboard National Bank, surrounded by suitcases full of her papers which she would transport back and forth in an old, battered carriage.

But her stinginess did come with some personal cost. She had a hernia and went to the local doctor. He recommended an operation which would have set her back 150 dollars. Of course, she refused to pay that amount and lived with the pain for the rest of her life, some twenty years or so. More tragically, her miserliness affected her son, Ned, who somehow managed to break his leg severely. Hetty took him to a free hospital but the doctor recognised her and said that he would not treat the poor lad unless she paid for his services. Of course, she refused but sadly gangrene set in, Ned had his leg amputated above the knee and was fitted with a cork leg. It is thought that his father met the bill.

When she reached the age of seventy-eight, Hetty is reported to have attributed her longevity to her habit of chewing baked onions. Sadly, she suffered a number of strokes towards the end of her life and spent her last years in a wheelchair.

And why was she called the witch? Her appearance was so startling that children associated her long black dress with the attire of the witches they saw in their story books.