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Keeping your community covered. We're committed to producing high-quality, fact-based news and information that gives you the facts in this community we call home. If our work has helped you stay informed, take action, or feel more connected to Windham County – please give now to help us reach our goal of raising $150,000 by December 31st.
The press called her “The Witch of Wall Street.” The basis for the name was her irascibility and her personal hygiene. She stunk.
In summertime the odor would be so foul that people working in the same bank office where she kept a desk would scheme to stay as far away from her as possible. Her long black dresses, decades out of style, would turn green and ragged from wear and filth. Her fingernails were crusty dirty.
She went around for 20 years beleaguered by a painful hernia before she finally had to see the doctor. She was outraged by his fee for surgery ($150 - a century ago), but so desperate that she agreed. And later she tried to stiff the doctor, as was her wont whenever it came to paying for anybody's services.
She was known as “the richest woman in America” or “the richest woman in the world.” Therein lay the real reason a lot of men thought she was a witch.
