Talk:Hetty Green

Discrepancy
There is a conflict between paragraphs - about the 15-cent pies and the oatmeal heate on the radiator. This needs to be fixed. Note that a New Yorker article in 2001 on Hetty Green says that that the oatmeal story is bogus. 23:46, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

And the story about the son is of disputed authenticity, courtesy of the same NYer article. One of these days I'm going to move one of them cardboard boxes in my bedroom so I can properly cite the source... Ellsworth 23:50, 20 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Under Investing Career the article states "After the 1885 collapse of the financial house John J. Cisco & Son, of which Edward was a partner, it was disclosed Edward had $700,000 in debt. Hetty Green's $500,000 represented one-quarter of the bank's assets. The bank refused to allow her transfer of her $26 million in stocks, bonds, mortgages, and deeds to the Chemical National Bank, until Edward's debt was paid." First she has $500,00 in the bank, which is not enough to settle a $700,000 debt, and the next moment she also has $26 million which she wants to remove. Can anyone explain this? WordwizardW (talk) 18:09, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

What happened to the money; and daughter
A 1951 issue of "The Stute" newspaper (pdf file) of the Stevens Institute of Technology documents the bequests of Hetty's daughter, saying the daughter's name was Hetty Green Wilks. This contradicts the article. Pending the verification of some kind editor I'm leaving the names in the current article alone.

An obvious question the article should answer is: What happened to her money when she died? Based on the above report it sounds like half went to the son and half to the daughter, but this is just a guess; for now I've only added a mention of what the daughter did with her estate. Tempshill 20:14, 8 November 2005 (UTC)


 * I remember reading an article (which I apparently cannot find any more) which stated that Green willed all her money to her son (she allowed her daughter to marry but removed her from her will). When the son died, daughter inherited the rest (not sure how this would have worked). She, in turn would have willed her share to strangers and numerous charities. Source, however, may be dubious - Skysmith 19:46, 12 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Her will left "the bulk of her estate to her son, Col. E. H. R. Green, and her daughter, Mrs. Matthew Astor Wlks. The remainder is distributed in smaller bequests to old friends of Mrs. Green."

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=wbIgAAAAIBAJ&sjid=TGkFAAAAIBAJ&pg=4344,292852&dq=mrs-green%27s&hl=en 208.118.163.99 (talk) 18:33, 23 May 2011 (UTC)


 * As to how Hetty's daughter inherited from her son - since he died childless and with no living parents at common law she would be his sole heir. Or he could have willed all his property to her. Ellsworth 15:27, 6 December 2006 (UTC)


 * An old question, but a follow-up answer from 100 Minds That Made The Market. I'm loathe to cite it in the article itself because it's a tertiary source, so I'll do some follow-up and add it later.  Anyway, here's what he said: Hetty Green didn't want her money to leave her family, so she wrote up a restrictive set of wills and prenuptial agreements that would prevent any inlaws from stealing away any of her money.  Neither of her children had children, so when they died the remainder of her fortune was "passed to more than 100 beneficiaries who never even knew Green". Chris Croy 05:39, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Alternative stories
I read in an article that Hetty wasn't just recognized at the hospital when she took Ned for treatment on his leg. There was more to the story. To save money, Hetty took Ned to a free hospital for the poor. One of the doctors then recognized Hetty and knew she was rich. The doctor asked her for a donation, and she was so offended she whisked Ned away before he could get treated. After two years without treatment for his leg, Ned finally had the leg amputated.

Also, I read that she died of a stroke during an argument with a shop assistant over the price of millk -- not with a maid over the virtues of skimmed milk. She didn't look like she ate skimmed anything. (Life Lines Pre-Intermediate (2003), Oxford University Press, page 26) 89.176.27.233 (talk) 20:09, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Children spend freely, financial genius
"Her children, lacking their mother's financial genius, also tended to spend their money more freely"

What does this mean exactly? I fail to see how spending money freely relates to financial genius. Maybe it should say "lacking their mother's eccentricity". As it is, it looks like a non sequitur. 70.66.9.162 14:18, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

According to the time life book I have with an article about Hetty, Sylvia inherited her mother's miserliness and didn't spend the way her brother did. Ned was said to have spent 3 million a year after his mother's death.--216.162.194.156 06:11, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

In the 1970's I knew a bookseller who had dealt with Green decades before. He would often come into her shop and point to a case of books saying he'd buy That....meaning the entire contents of the case. She said that after he did this a few times she had to keep estimates of the totaled price of most of the stock cases, to save having to add up all the individual prices.Saxophobia 23:03, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Charles Slack Biography
The biography by Charles Slack cited in the article is the most recent of the few full-length biographies of Hetty Green. Carefully researched and persuasively argued, he corrects many oft-repeated stories about Hetty and her children, for example, showing that Ned died a rich man and somewhat ameliorating the story of Hetty's treatment of Ned's leg (although she hardly comes off well in Slack's version, either).


 * The book's bibliography isn't that impressive, actually - I admit our reference options are relatively slim, however. I've consolidated your citations and put them in proper form. DoctorJoeE (talk) 08:07, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Popular References
Decemberists "Calamity Song": Hetty Green, queen of supply-side bonhomie bone-drab, if you know what I mean... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.181.105.239 (talk) 03:54, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

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POV violation
This is an amazing - what do we call the opposite of a hatchet job? Glow up? Despite many contemporaneous evaluations of the woman’s character, the POV adopts the hagiography of one obit and concludes (!) that her character was X and not Y (!!). Unencyclopedic, should be restored to objective view that takes no position on whether she was generous or miserly. Present the notable accounts and don’t argue a conclusion. 71.230.66.216 (talk) 12:19, 10 April 2023 (UTC)


 * Agreed. Very odd page. 2A02:C7C:CB6F:E400:E985:E60:46B5:AAE6 (talk) 09:30, 27 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Very much agree--came to the talk page to bring this up. Someone has written a highly opinionated article on this woman and her eccentric thriftiness... I don't think only having the dirtiest parts of your dresses washed is an indicator of simply not partaking in the excesses of the Gilded Age. People of her own time thought she was weird because she WAS weird, not just because she was an ace investor who was also a woman.
 * All the POV needs to be taken out and the whole page re-worked into NPOV. Tttttarleton (talk) 14:02, 1 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Agree. The lede is written very strangely. AllTheUsernamesAreInUse (talk) 03:42, 20 March 2024 (UTC)