Getting on the bosses. Good side is just you giving yourself positive affirmations. You never have to fake laugh at the bosses. Lamed jokes, because your whole Larry's and awkward chit chat with the boss would just be awkward. Chit chat with yourself because you are a small business owner born to be your own boss and annex can help funding solutions for eligible business customers. So you can keep doing what you were made to do that power backing of American Express dont do business without it terms, apply, learn more american, Express Dotcom, slash business happy Saturday, everybody we haven't, you show launching on our network. It's called. She makes money moves and its hosted by glamour. Editor in chief Samantha Barry is all about money like its name, suggests

Finally, how money relates to women and to go along with that theme. Today's classic episode is our August. Twenty seven Lonnie fourteen episode on heading dream. She was one of the wealthiest women in the United States in her day, but for exemplary behaviour, anti reputation as a Miser letter to being disparagingly called the witch of Wall Street Tune in for a peak it. She makes money at the end of today's episode. Welcome this you missed in history, class of production of Iheart Radios, house of works and I'm Tracy bewilderment, and so there is that so we'll take. We talked about it a little bit in our mouth episode in our upset about algebra, about women lacking mathematical proclivity in not having much business sense, but that those stereotypes what

point. We obliterated by today's topic and in the MID eighteen hundred before many people were talking about obliterating those stereotypes. She was seen as a peer and an equal to many a wall streets. You know heaviest hitting financiers

and she really open the door to the idea that women can succeed in finance. But despite her immense success in these really admirable accomplishments, it's kind of difficult to like Hetty Green, who is who were talking about today and, as is often the case with people who are extremely driven or really gifted in one way or in one area. The areas outside of her life that fell outside of link finance and building her fortune really often suffered, and that included her family, which is part of why it's kind of hard to like her and well we'll get to a specific incident as we go on, but she sort of fascinating in that regard she's one of those people that you can help it be fascinated by, but there is a certain sort of lake YE under no revulsion is the right word, but there's a it. You can't help but wins a little bit at some of the things that happened in her life because of her absurd

and with building the family fortune. So we will kick off and start to set the beginning, as we usually do with her early childhood and her burthen her faintly had he was born, Henrietta Helen Robinson on November, twenty first eighteen, thirty, four in New Bedford Massachusetts, her mother was Abbe Howland who could trace her family directly back to the Mayflower and her father was Edward MOT, Robinson and had his mother is said to have been quite dismayed that she did not have a son to be here too the family fortune, and so she also set Hetty the live with her grandfather when she was still a very small child. Import me in part, because Abbe was a very poor health, so Hetty was not terribly close to her mother ass. A result Hetty spent most

for childhood with the men in the family and she learned about business and money management from her father and her grandfather. The two of them were partners in a wailing company which did quite well. Her father was an excellent and astute businessmen who said to have increased the families fiscal fortunes, twenty old and right out of the gate. Hetty was really into money as a concept she opened her for savings account when she was only eight years old and two years after that, she was sent it putting school, although she was a terribly interested in it. She talks in interviews how she kind of lake went ahead and like trudged through, but she didn't really like it and soon she was really back with her male elders. Reading the financial pages hit home and feeling like she was getting a much better education in that regard. One of the story is about her.

But her father set her up with a whole new, expensive wardrobe, her formal society presentation, but she sold all of her new clothes and instead invested the money, can headings mother passed away when, when the heiress Hetty was only twenty five end, her newly sing father decided to move to New York for from Connecticut and Hetty, followed because you know at this point in his life, even though he was a little bit older, he was still considered ineligible bachelor as a widower and there's some pretty significant speculation. That Hetty motivation for following her father was to ensure that she was not forgotten and left out of the family fortune in the event, He re married and started a new family when her father and her aunt both died in the same year Hetty Was thirty one at the time was poised to inherit the family fortune, the general opinion

Her male relatives was that she would have been better off with her money in a trust and with a male relative managing things, and all of that had been arranged for in the wills for both of the wills in question. Yes, actually was not given as much in her aunts will ass. She had hoped that comes up a little bit more in just a bit as a woman. You know in the mid eighteen hundreds, even though she had grown up with these two men who were really quite established, financiers and quite good at handling money, and they had talked with her a great deal about it. She was still perceived as just be unable to handle the demands of managing any sort of wealth. But Harry was very headstrong. She was very confident in her abilities to handle her own fortune either she been keeping accounts for her father and she had been reading stock quotes to her grandfather every night from the paper since she was very young child, and so she mounted a lawsuit against the trustees of her fathers will

and she actually took legal action to break her aunts will which was a newer version than the one she said she had last seen. She did managed wrangle. A million dollars of her fathers fortune in eighteen, sixty five. And later on. She procured part of her answer state, eventually after I urge arguing and litigation ass. She reached an income arrangement from a trust and she ended up with. Somewhere between six million dollars and seven million dollars between the two states. That's not adjusted to today's value there. That is eighteen sixty dollars, so it was a really really huge. Yeah. She she had plenty of money arena at it's. One of the things were even you know today. Obviously, if someone had six million dollars, maybe I'm pretty good shape, so you can imagine a hundred and fifty years ago,

that was like and is all of this legal back and forth. Over her inheritance was dragging on particularly the the stuff with her aunts will had. He actually got me Reed, she married Edward Henry Green, and this was in eighteen. Sixty seven and Hetty was thirty three at the time green, the silk trader, Andy served on the board of a bank, but his business and heavies did not mingle. The pair never come their finances, which, as you can imagine, was pretty unheard of at the time and in fact, green, had to sign of pre up agreeing that he would keep his hands off. Hetty money, which pre up arrangements of some sort or another have actually been around for hundreds and hundreds of years, but at him mind. This sticks out as one of the earliest sort of modern prenuptial arrangements. For a while, the two of them moved to England and they stayed there were seven years,

and this was a move that they made to escape some of the bad press that Hetty had gotten while she was contesting her aunts. Well, she had a priest version of the will that had named her as the sole inheritor, and there was the scandal over the fact that people sort of believed it was a forged document that Hetty had made for herself. Yeah and this year caused also some legal heat which help to move them right along to England and they actually had their fur child while they were living in London. His name was Edward Howlin, Robinson Green, and that was in eighteen, sixty eight. So, just a year after their marriage, And then, three years later still in London, they had a daughter named Hetty Sylvia, an Howland Robinson Green, and she went by Sylvia. She grew up the two of them in there, children lived very well while they were in London and

of their living expenses came out of Edwards Bunny, so there had been a financial panic in eighteen, seventy three and not long after that. A couple years later, the greens moved back to the. U S You know that the concerns had died down over the legal document and whether there had been any foul play involved, and so they settled in Vermont, where Edward was originally from and it was not long before he marched right to Wall Street. She made a pilgrimage to New York and she went into John Jay, Cisco and sons to deposit cash and stock certificates, and she was ready to start investing with that money right there, and, with her separate and independent fortune, Hetty invested very very wisely instead of focusing on fast cash investments that would build up her fortune. Really quickly

how do you opted for long term investments, she primarily invested in bonds and real estate? She also invested in the railroads and she bought real estate, primarily in Chicago New York and Saint Louis, as her fortune grew. She also expanded her holdings. Well, beyond these cities and all of her money handling every move she made was really well informed. She did copious amounts of research on her own before she Burma money behind anything, and it wasn't just that she was a patient and best her. She was also really frugal, even though she had at this point had amassed a massive fortune. She lived really simply. She didn't have a lavish lifestyle at all and as a consequence, she always had money and when there were dips in the market or panics, she really didn't have to worry about it. She could just expand her fortune

there, instead of worrying about getting by day to day until the crisis past she loaned money and purchased real estate on the cheap, from desperate sellers and the financial panics caused many investment firms to declare bankruptcy because of their huge debt. Hetty, who had never borrowed money as a rule, always state on site, solid ground, and before we get to kind of her. Obsession with investing in money and expanding her wealth kind of ramping up. Do you wanna, take a word from our sponsor sure Getting on the bosses, good side is just you giving yourself positive affirmations. You never have to fake laugh at the bosses. Lame jokes, because your hilarious, an awkward chit chat with the boss, would just be awkward. Chit chat with yourself, because you are a small business owner born to be your own boss and Amex can help

funding solutions for eligible business customers, so you can keep doing what you were made to do that power backing of American Express dont. Do business without it terms, apply, learn more american, Express Dotcom, slash business and so now back to heavy who she is point in New York. She has really entrenched herself in his lifestyle of trading in buying and seems as the rule as her money management continue to take off and it took a more and more of her time. She grew less and less interested in taking care of herself. She seemed just become so obsessed with her work in finance that everything else can. Following from her focus. Her clothes would go unwashed, they would be eventually fall into ragged disrepair and she would continued away

them she often looked very grubby so much so that merchants are said to have winced when she entered their stores. They dreaded her dirty hands. Seeing their merchandise. I mean she would even purchase broken cookies at the the store, so she could get a discount for them and she would return bury boxes to the markets if she could get a refund momentum. So she was living very frugally very, very cheaply, but she really wasn't taken great care of herself when she finally Dade relent and take her close to them. Nurse. She said to have insisted that they only wash the bottoms of the skirts they're just to take away the obvious mud and dirt, and she would negotiate a reduced price where the partial cleaning and her children, This is the part that really breaks my heart. You know her children had the wealthiest woman in Amerika for a mother, but they wore and me downs. They looked like me. No ragged friends and poppers from like a Dickens novel. It said that is, their winter. Clothes were thin.

She would them with newspapers rather than spend money on new coats and shoes would get the same treatment serve. The kids had holes in their souls. She would patch them cheaply or just line them with paper too, so that the whole wasn't completely open. Her tight fisted this with her money really cost her son deal dearly. So when mad as he was known, hurt his leg while he was flooding, Hetty put off getting a medical treatment for him, because you didn't want to get a bill from the doktor and consequently his leg never healed correctly and finally had to be amputate. Because he developed gangrene, so the nickname the witch of Wall Street came from the way Hetty carried herself in public. As a woman, she was often confronted with people who thought that they could take advantage of her and one of the ways that she dealt with that despite being really shrewd and abrupt and her behaviour, she was very direct and very cautious in all of her dealing

and additionally, she wore solid black most of the time and she wore war clothes. They were a little bit David again. She didn't like to buy new clothes, so she was gonna, be out of season in these older. You know dusty. Looking thing see, you could see where people would start calling her a which, based on in a sort of the depictions of which is at the time- and it also said this- she did not really have a great personal smell, which is not really a Puget leap of logic. Given accounts of her less than stellar hygiene, because she was this enigmatic and unusual figure lots of rumours circulating about her. One of these was She was so miserly that she only had one dress, as we have already mentioned. She definitely did have a penny. Pinching streak about yeah there's a story in a twenty twelve biography that was written about her and the

the story goes is that she was carrying two hundred thousand dollars in bonds on public transportation and again that is not a justice that is two hundred thousand dollars in eighteen. Sixty money earned. This may have been a little bit later, but and when someone simulated like hey, that's, not really wise to carry that much wealth on public transportation. She insisted that she could not afford to hire a private carriage as they were suggesting and that if they can that's great for them, but she couldn't just kind of honey. You know it's like the person sitting, there were the pile of money in their laps saying they can afford a taxi. Another story. She lived with a hernia were years rather than going to the doktor to have it looked at and she only went once the pain became really unbearable and then she was infuriated. The surgery was gonna cost a hundred and fifty dollars. She only agreed to it because she was in so much pain and allegedly she then, tried to get away without paying the bill to the doktor. There is

a rumour. They went around that she had a man's brain in a woman's body and in alike that was not intended to be taken literally by you know, a person who initially set. It was one of those. You know just kind of offhand comments, this TED Bit kind, slid into. The rumour mill and people believed it, though, it were a real thing and not sort of just a commentary on her shrewdness and her acumen in business, and it just added to that which mystique that you know she's a sort of almost Frankenstein character of it has male thinking in a woman's body, but is also a tinge of sexism the nickname. Clearly, a woman who could amass so much of a fortune and stand Toto with men when it came to making deals had to be a sorceress her odd and unsettling demeanor really didn't help. The press picked up the name and they started using the witch of Wall Street any time they were

Where did any financial news involving her and she was really worth reporting about. So a lot of Ben on Wall Street and elsewhere. We're just really happy to be insulting about Hetty and some. You say, men were the ones appealing to her for loans and fiscal assistance when they ran into a crisis. This was the case throughout her life. She said to have saved the city of New York on several occasions when the city's coffers ran dry and she even wrote a cheque for one point: one million dollars in the nineteen o seven Knickerbocker crisis as part of the emergency bank bail out that was headed by J P, Morgan yeah people would just say horrible things about her. Snicker behind her back but boy they were really happy to take her money when they needed it. As is often the case.

And so, while Hetty was having these spectacular successes in finance, her husband, unfortunately, was not. He had been making investments through the years justice his wife had, but he just did not have her skill. It picking winners and really lake you Nope assembling a cohesive portfolio. That was all smart moves and the two, billion dollars that he had entered their marriage with, had slowly dwindled down until it was mostly gone and surprise only a husband who could not manage his own. Money was of no interest to Hetty, despite the fact that he was from a good family and by all accounts, was kind and affable man. She died failed him out several times at once. She had to Oliver Money out of the bank to avoid being seized to cover his debts, and at that point enough was enough, and so in eighteen, oh, one. After fourteen years of marriage, she took the children and she moved to New York. She kept the basque and Office on Wall Street in

Finally, in the bank, where she moved her money after the incident with Edwards debt collectors caused her to leave her previous bank. She brought her lunch of oatmeal or a plain ham sandwich with her every day. And because she wasn't exactly enthusiastic about paying taxes on the property she owned. She children, never had a consistent home. The three of them moved around a lot to dodge debt collectors and they stayed in cheap flats over the years all over the city, spent time in Hoboken the Bowery Harlem in Brooklyn, anywhere that had he could find a deal on a cold water flat with a low weekly rate. She would use aliases it most of them, sometimes even registering under her dogs name there there's debate over what the actual name of her dog was, and it could just be that there are multiple dogs, some list him as Dewey

even list him, his money being his name which to me sounds a little urban legend IE and I think, there's another name in the mix, but in any case, her dog rented some flats for her ned, Her son went to Fordham and he pursued a law degree and had he had always had in mind that he was going to be the one that manage the family fortune after her, and so after he actuated. She gave him a job managing some of her properties in Chicago and he did quite well. They are, and so she eventually moved him to Texas to see after interests. There has life away from his mother who gave bed a little taste of freedom. He started to like more extravagant living and he did have several dalliances with some ladys. We can say they negotiable affections of her family, to put it up

Harry was afraid that he would end up married to a woman who was only after the family fortune, so she begged NED to promise her. He would never get married. He acquiesced, although his Mitch mistress, who was a former prostitute, stayed with him and the pair lived as though they were married to each other. This episode is brought to you by the all new twenty twenty Ford explorer Tracy. I know that you have been thinking about an interesting thing lately, which is why your pic would be for the greatest exploration vehicle of all time, yeah to go with the research vessel petrol that was owned by the late Paul Allen that found so many shipwrecks which our listeners love, that we started to make jokes about it like we were like, and this is a shipwreck that wasn't by that vessel well be all their twenty. Twenty four explorer is the greatest exploration vehicle of all time. There are a lot of places that have been explored by other vehicles, but this vehicle, the Fort explorer, is going to take you

places that you might not think of as explorations, but really can be, for it. Well, maybe you can never navigate your life and you have to get around town, which can be a whole big problem, especially if you live in a city like Atlanta Land. I were trafficked constantly congested I just want to go on a great vacation in writing in a perfect vehicle, makes it the ideal ride or even just want in things like going to the grocery store. Sometimes that is true fee. To achieve this, if you buy groceries the way I do, you could do all of this and more with the all new twenty twenty four explorer that all new twenty twenty four explore, the greatest exploration vehicle of all time. That was you actually moved back to New York by his mother to see after the business and unlike his mother, who still insisted on living in cheap rental flats. He lay

for a little while at the Waldorf Historiae, and then he and his mistress move to adjoining town houses near central Park, and while men did not share his mother's taste in lodging or lifestyle. He really it in here at her business acumen and he proved himself to be extremely adept at managing the family fortune. Medeon Edwards daughter, Sylvia State unmarried and stayed with her mother until she was thirty nine. At that point, she married Matthew, Astor Wilkes, who was the great grandchild of John Jacob after the First Wilkes, was in his sixty. So he was much older than Sylvia, but heavy approved of the marriage because he had family money of his own and promised tat. He would never touch Sylvia is yet. It said that Hetty didn't really like.

Matthew, but she liked that he was willing to stay out of her families, money and Sylvia S. Wedding is often pointed to as one of the few times that Hetty kind of loosened her purse strings. She paid for the wedding and it said, and it said that she was much more fiscally in old in the whole affair than just about any other time. She was in her life and prior to Sylvia Eating Matthew Hetty had also paid to host several dinners like had places at the plaza, so that her daughter could invite eligible man and they could have the sort of social events in all of this was really because heavy had been quite concerned that Sylvia wasn't married and this is sound sort of a little ironic given what a fiercely independent woman Hetty herself was, but even so, Oh, she had been married and she seem to think that it was important for a woman to marry at some point had either I'd on July, third, nineteen. Sixteen at her sons townhouse. She had gotten six.

Years before with pneumonia, and at that point the papers had reported that the witch of Wall Street was really add death's door, but she defied them and recovered the illness left pretty frail, though, and she was unable to work any more afterward, so she moved in with her son and insisted that she pay him rents, but no more than she would have paid at them. A modest lodgings. She would normally have gotten for herself eventually, after falling into gradually poorer and poorer health she'd have that initial pneumonia that caused the deaths scare when she was in her late seventies. I believe she was seventy seven and then she was approaching her. Eighty second birthday she had a series of paralytic strokes, and so she die just a few weeks before her birthday when she died. She left behind a two of more than a hundred million dollars which seed acquired over the

fifty one years that she had worked, she owned about six thousand pieces of property across forty eight states and she held the deeds to theatres, railroads, hotels, office, buildings and cemeteries, and she held the mortgages for more than five hundred churches yeah and again, that is not an adjusted amounts. That was a hundred million in the nineteen teens when she died so I have seen various adjustment estimates that our wildly different, some that put her in low billions- if that were today's money and some put her lake in the tens of billions. So it's a pretty wide range, but basically she would have been a billionaire if, if this was in today's fiscal measuring

and so then NED inherited a big chunk of the money and, unlike his mother, he took that money and he lived big. He was still you know doing his job as a financier, but he spent plenty of that money. He married his mistress. That he had promised his mother. He would never marry although it is said that he also had dalliances with other women, any spent a huge. The money building mammoth mentions in multiple places, any staffed, all of them with a full complement of servants. He kind of made up for all the last time that they lived very poorly, is children and he gave you a lot of money to charity, any also funded several scientific research projects. He did some work with MIT and let them even use some of his property to to do some of their experiments. Men died and nineteen thirty seven, and at that point the estate went to Sylvia, who was already a widow. She and turn left the entire lot to various chair.

Cities. So all that money that had he had spent her wife hoarding eventually was given away yeah it's one of those moments, her ear. You feel reasonably confident that if she could, she was probably rowing in her grave. But it's interesting to note. I mean she gets these This almost caricature agreed description in anything. You read about her. That's right, I'm almost reluctant to ever say anything with certainty about her, because it seems like every report of her is coloured by sort of the press in this weird image that she had, but I want to wrap up with a quote from Hetty herself that I think is really telling in it. It kind of pulls the whole thing together and reminds us that, yes, she was a very extreme person with some very extreme behaviors, but she was still a purse

She is she said this in response to criticisms and bad press about her, and you know this is a woman who was listed in the Guinness Book of Records is the world's greatest miser. But this quote goes my life, written down for me in Wall Street by people who, I assume, do not care to no one iota of the real Hetty Green. I am in earnest. Therefore, they picture me his heart, ass. I go my own way. I take no partner risk, nobody else is Fourchan Therefore I am Madame Ishmael set against every man, so that had agreed. Thank you so much for joining us on this Saturday. If you have heard an email address or a facebook url or something similar over the course of today is that besides, since it is from the archive that might be out of date, now you can email us at history, podcast at how stuff works, dot, com and you can

and ass all over social media at missed in history, and you can subscribe to our shadow on Apple podcast, Google Pie catch, the eye heart, radio app and wherever else he wasn't a bogged study. Mr history, in the production of migrant radios, housetop works for our paths. For my how radio visit by her Radiohead, Appleton guests or wherever you listen to your favorite, shows,

I was one serious emergency away from being completely broke. What would happen if it's my money would just sort of sit in my savings and nothing would be done with it. We wanted to enjoy certain things in life and not be stressed. The living patriarch to pay check, I do remember, having nights rose up at night, worrying about where my paychecks were coming from when they were coming in on some of the very the editor in chief of glamour and the host of she makes money moves. I believe, there's power, especially for young women, in talking about money. How much we make on which we spend and how money impacts are identities is under relationships can This. Your invitation to join the conversation you'll hear for across the country, who shared their honest on scripted stories, their salaries. I about thirty thousand dollars. Their struggles clearly work,

are going to be able to afford to keep the house and the lessons learned along the way and actually my credit cards just got maxed out and it was almost I didn't know when that even happened, thereby Yes, I think I save my first hundred thousand when I was twenty eight, don't we love so you They tell me are: mortgage was not pay and new went shopping and there are also be advice from financial experts helping to guide these women and women everywhere toward a better financial future. I'll say this first informal. It is your younger souths job to look at two year old herself I don't think you should break up a someone just cause. They said I have a hundred thousand dollars and stood alone time. Money is the ultimate taboo topic and, where more comfortable getting physically naked with somebody them financially naked. She makes money moves from glamour, and I heard radio premiers on Apple podcast, Iheart, radio or wherever you listened to your favorite, shows

scribe now to join us as we have women raised their voices and make money lose. You can't afford to miss it. Oh, my dad's gonna be so ashamed of me when this area I'm kidding correct, and I back with my new pie cast next question with Katy current nets question. To make sense of our chaotic, complicated and ever changing world one question at a time I look forward figuring this all out together, listen to next question with Katy, correct on the eye: heart, radio, app apple pie, gas or wherever you go. Your podcast,