Heather Mills McCartney? Judge for yourself.

Early in the era. in 1840, Thomas Hood described a more decadent family in a trenchant spoof called "Miss Kilmansegg and Her Precious Leg: A Golden Legend." Miss Kilmansegg's name alone would give away Hood's purpose: children of a gold-happy father, her family are capable of destroying the eggs of others in pursuit of their own nest egg. In fact, the whole family are goldbugs and Miss Kilmansegg, educated to be like the rest, develops an insufferable hauteur and prizes gold above all else. One day when this haughty young woman is our riding, her "very rich bay called Banker" (Hood, 212) shies at the sight of a beggar and runs away with her. Miss Kilmansegg heads for a fall, this time only a literal one. Her leg is destroyed in the accident, yet she triumphs over adversity by acquiring her precious golden leg:

So a Leg was made in a comely mould,
Of Gold, fine virgin glittering gold,
   As solid as man could make it--
Solid in foot, and calf, and shank,
A prodigious sum of money it sank;
In fact 'twas a Branch of the family Bank,
   And no easy matter to break it. (SP 803-09)

Pride, vanity, ostentation, insensibility--these are Miss Kiimansegg's sins; but if punishment for them is due, it is slow in coming Miss Kilmansegg dreams on, especially of the god-like veneration she feels she deserves for her goldenness. And her sins compound:

Gold, still gold-and true to the mould!
In the very scheme of her dream it told;
   For, by magical transmutation,
From her Leg through her body it seem'd to go, [62/63]
Till, gold above, and gold below,
She was gold, all gold, from her little gold toe
To her organ of Veneration! (SP, 1378-84)

But Miss Kilmansegg rides for a second and fatal fall when she foolishly marries a money-seeking count who depletes her fortune and then asks to raise more money on the golden leg. Miserable in marriage, Miss Kilmansegg now spends her nights dreaming of her past with its "golden treasures and golden toys" (SP, 2319). One night as she sleeps, her leg laid to one side, the count seizes the leg, beats his wife to death, and makes off with the precious limb. The ensuing inquest over her body yields a surprising verdict:

Gold--still gold! it haunted her yet--
At the Golden Lion the Inquest met--
   Its foreman, a carver and gilder--
And the Jury debated from twelve till three
What the Verdict ought to be,
And they brought it in as Felo de Se,
   "Because her own Leg had killed her!" (SP, 2367-73)

Hood bathetically depicts Miss Kilmansegg's death as a suicide because her own vanity and tenacity are really what have dispatched her. She has chosen to become gold--in thought, in dream, and even in body, and when her gold goes, so does she.