HETTY GREEN

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXXI, Issue 4959, 23 February 1937, Page 3

HETTY GREEN

WORLD'S MEANEST WOMAN. LEGAL BATTLE OVER HER MILLIONS. Hetty Green, who loved money so much that she lived to become the richest woman the world has ever known, must be turning over in her grave. More than £10,000,000 is being claimed by three States and the United States Government as back-

taxes and inheritance taxes on her vast estate. Hetty who lived in the days when a million dollars almost meant poverty in America, lived and died for money. She met handsome, young Edward Green, heard he had made a fortune in the Far East, and hurriedly married him. She deserted him some years later, when he went broke, and refused to give him a penny. He died because she would not give him enough money to buy food. When her son Edward graduated

from college he went to work in a railway office and earned £1 a month. He wrote asking for a small allowance. "Not a penny more until you're worth it," answered Hetty Green. She died in 1916 because she argued about money with a drunken cook. His reply caused her to have a stroke. She left £20,000,000 to her son, who had become Colonel Edward Green, and whose request fo* a few dollars she had once refused. Colonel Green liked to spend money as much as his mother liked

to save it. He spent millions on aviation, on radio, on destitute girls. Colonel Green died in June this year. It was announced that he had left no will, but a few weeks later Mrs. Matthew Astov Wilks, the only daughter of Hetty, came forward and filed a will made by her brother before his marriage, under which she received Hetty Green's fortune. Since then legal battle for those millions has been waged. Recently Mrs. Green won the first victory. She was appointed execiu trix and sole administrator of her

husband's estate, now valued at. more than £16,000,000. Now comes the serving of notices by three States and the United States Government.