Hetty Green

Type of activity: Reading and vocabulary lesson in which students read about an infamous person and answer questions along with learning useful words connected to money.
Level: Intermediate and above

Teacher's notes:

Write $3 million on the board and ask the students to think about what they would do with that money. Tell them to just shout out ideas and then put them into pairs to discuss this further.
Explain that they are going to read about a woman who was the richest woman in the world at the turn of the century in the US.
Ask them to tell you who they think the richest person in their country is and who they think the richest person in the world is.
Then hand out the vocabulary worksheet below out and tell the students that all of the words are connected to money.
Put the students into pairs and ask them to match the definitions to the words. They should try to guess the meaning of some of the words. When they have finished, go over the answers as a class.

Answers:

1. c
2. a
3. e
4. d
5. f

6. g
7. h
8. b
9. j
10. i

Words

Definitions

Miserly
Generous
Tightfisted
To be careful with money
To spend money like water
To have a hole in your pocket
Watch the pennies and the pounds
Frugal
To pay through the nose
Exorbitant

To give to money to people happily
To live without any luxuries
To never want to spend money
To spend money carefully i.e. not to spend too
much
The opposite of generous (informal)
To spend money too easily
To spend money as soon as you get it will look after themselves'
To count even the smallest change because that will add up to a sizeable amount in the end
To be very excessively expensive
To pay too much for something

Reading:

Before the reading make sure that the students have understood the vocabulary and then set this gist question: Was Hetty a nice person?

Comprehension questions:

When was Hetty born?
How much did she inherit from her family?
Along with the money, what else did Hetty inherit from her family?
Look at the previously taught words and use one or two to describe Hetty.
Why was Hetty called the ‘Queen of Wall Street’?
When she died, what was she known as?
Do you think Hetty would have paid through the nose for anything?
What was Hetty worth when she died?
What happened to Hetty’s son?
Would Hetty approve of her own children now?

Hetty Green: the richest, the meanest, the most renowned woman at the turn of the century

Hetty Green was born Henrietta Howland Robinson at New Bedford, Massachusetts, on November 21st in 1834. Her family made a fortune in the whaling industry and was completely obsessed with money. They hated spending it but loved saving it and made as much money as possible. Hetty inherited these family characteristics.

She learnt how to invest money when she was very young. At the age of six she could read the New York Financial Times which she did in order to check how stocks and shares were doing on the Stock Market. She hated spending money. She realized that every dime her parents spent was a dime she would fail to inherit later. She lived in a simple, frugal way. On her twenty-first birthday Hetty refused to light the candles on her cake, saying she didn't want to waste them. On the next day she cleaned them up and returned them to the store for a refund. This behavior was especially strange because on her twenty-first birthday Hetty inherited seven and a half million dollars.

Through a series of shrewd investments, Hetty made her fortune grow and won herself the title of 'The Queen of Wall Street.' However, rival investors, jealous of her repeated successes, preferred to call her 'The Witch of Wall Street’ and that's the title she eventually took to her grave on July 3rd 1916. The nickname ‘the Witch’ was perpetuated by the fact that Hetty wore black every day. She was so mean that she wouldn’t even spend money on her own son’s leg operation which led to him having his leg amputated. She lived in a series of dirty rented rooms, spending as little as $5 a week for living expenses. She would buy broken cookies because they were cheap. She wore the same dress day after day until it was in tatters. When she absolutely had to wash the garment, she often instructed that it be laundered only on the bottom where it was dirty. Lunch would be a serving of oatmeal warmed on an office radiator. Her one extravagance seemed to be her dog, which ate better than Hetty.

Her reputation as a shrewd business woman was as well-known as her inability to spend money. When Hetty died in 1916 at the age of 81, her fortune was estimated at more than $100 million (over $17 billion in today's dollars). She left entire fortune to her son and daughter. They apparently did not learn their mother's lessons well; both spent the money freely and generously.

After the students have done the comprehension questions; tell them to write definitions for these words:

Extravagant
Shrewd
Perpetuated
To be obsessed
To make a fortune
To leave money after one has died
Entire
Rivals

Once you have gone over the definitions put the students into groups of three. Ask them, in their groups, to decide what they would do with a fortune of $20 million dollars. They can do anything they want but they must agree as a group.