Accused Of FORGERY At 33. Bailed Out New York At 72. Buried As A WITCH: Hetty Green

Accused Of FORGERY At 33. Bailed Out New York At 72. Buried As A WITCH: Hetty Green The official story fits on a postcard. Hetty Green was the richest woman in America and the cheapest person who ever lived. One black dress, cold-water flats across the river from Wall Street, a son who lost his leg because she would not pay a doctor. The newspapers called her the Witch of Wall Street, and that is how she was buried. But in 1868 a Boston courtroom heard two Harvard scientists swear one thing and a Harvard mathematician swear the opposite, about a single signature on her aunt's will. In 1885 a New York bank collapsed with her husband's debts inside it. In the Panic of 1907 the City of New York came to her for money, and she lent it $1.1 million at six percent. And the fortune she fought hardest for, the one she was never allowed to own, ended up in the hands of more than four hundred strangers. It all started with the second page of an old woman's will. Chapters: 00:00 — The second page 03:08 — Act I — The Rise 07:48 — Act II — The Facade 12:00 — Act III — The Crack 18:06 — Act IV — The Reckoning 20:20 — Act V — The Aftermath 22:55 — The Howland heirs Source Material Visual material used in this production is obtained from publicly accessible archives, including Wikimedia Commons, the Library of Congress and Europeana. Copyright & Fair Use Notice This channel incorporates copyrighted material under the principles of Fair Use as recognized by U.S. law. Under Section 107 of the United States Copyright Act, certain uses of copyrighted works such as for analysis, commentary, educational purposes, research, and reporting are permitted without prior authorization from the copyright holder. Sources Hetty Green — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hetty_G... Howland will forgery trial — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howland... Fortune, Meet the Witch of Wall Street — https://fortune.com/2024/03/17/meet-t... Historic Women of the SouthCoast, Sylvia Ann Howland — https://historicwomensouthcoast.org/s... William M. Emery, The Howland Heirs (1919) — https://archive.org/details/howlandhe... #documentary #history #oldmoney #WallStreet