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Miss Lizzie Borden-“The Truth of the Awful Matter”Heat can kill but so can emotions that flare up. Thursday August 4, 1892 was the hottest day of the year in Fall River, Massachusetts. Lizzie Borden was coiled up like a cat ready to pounce. She was resolved in what she had to do but as she waited, she was hot, irritable only partly due to menstruating; she was uncomfortable, fearful and tense. Lizzie felt oppressed by a depressive, lingering anger that she harbored against her stepmother Abby Borden. She waited in her upstairs bedroom for Abby to come up to make up the guest room that morning. She knew that her stepmother was aware of her ill feelings that she harbored toward the woman who had married her widowed father and she had once called mother as a sign of respect. Her uncle, Mr. John V. Morse, had visited and stayed the night before and she knew that he had left earlier that morning. He was the brother of her and sister Emma’s mother and Andrew’s first wife Sarah. He was a peculiar man that Lizzie viewed rather indifferently and although she was aware of his visit, she made no effort to see him on the previous day---Wednesday---- for her uncle had come to visit her father Andrew and Abby. He departed early Thursday morning to visit a relative, Mrs. Daniel Emery, on Weybosset Street. She, Lizzie, like the rest of the Bordens “did not parade their difficulties” but she was an unhappy woman, for as many observed and some commented “things were not as pleasant in the Borden house as they might have been.” Lizzy and her older sister Emma felt that their father’s refusal to live on the top of ‘The Hill’ where the wealthy and elite resided made it impossible for them to become the socialites that they felt their wealth could provide for them. He refused to lavishly entertain and the daughters felt socially isolated because they could not reciprocate according to the expectations of their cultured, refined, up-and-coming younger peers of Fall River. Their father was a miser, a plain living man who was set in his rigid ways. He did not care for much and could not understand why his daughters—Emma and Lizzie---should care for anything different. Despite his wealth, he had set his daughter’s weekly allowance at $4, it was just miscellaneous pin money but it was less than what a female spinner earned in the neighboring textile mills. Andrew Jackson Borden had earned his one-quarter million dollars by hard work, saving, business acumen, an unwillingness to take on debt and he maintained his prosperity with a Puritan frugality. He had begun as a young cabinetmaker and even today his business provided ready-made furnishings for the living and the dead, for he kept on hand not only home furnishings but burial cases and fine-crafted caskets. He was described as ‘close-fisted but fair, square and just in his business dealings.’ Borden and Mr. William Almy sold furniture downcity, within walking distance and close to the Bordens’ home on Second Street, at prices that were advertised to be the lowest in the city. He was a self-made man who ultimately served as president and board member of the Union Savings Bank, as well as a director on the board of trustees for another local prominent bank and as a director for several Fall River textile manufacturing concerns. He owned farmland in nearby Swansea and as a shrewd, real estate developer he built in 1890 the A.J. Borden building that was situated at Anawan and South Main streets. His penchant for saving pennies added up into enough dollars where he purchased property with cash in hand. The house on Second Street was a former two-family house with two distinct tenements that Andrew renovated into a two-story one family home. His renovations displayed a peculiarity of sort in its design; he tore out the sink and water faucet from the upstairs second-floor level and left a large soapstone sink in the kitchen, installed a flushable water closet in the basement and connected both to the piping for city water. The second floor consisted of the bedrooms which opened up onto one another by connecting doors with locks to maintain privacy. The whole house contained no central hallways. Indoor bathrooms and electricity were available at the time but unlike in the more elite homes “at the top of the hill” in Fall River the Borden household did not have such comforts. Everyone toileted, washed, bathe by sponge bath and dressed in their own private bedroom quarters and everyone in the household served as their own chambermaid. Each had the responsibility of lugging their soiled but thankfully lidded porcelain chamber-pots to the cellar’s water-closet for disposal and cleansing. Of the two daughters’ bedchambers, Emma’s room was smaller and only accessible by way of Lizzie’s sleeping quarters. Family members discreetly knocked, unlocked and locked their connecting doors throughout the day in what was a rather secure but restrictive arrangement. At the rear of Lizzie’s bedroom was a door to the bedroom suite of the elder Bordens but it was hooked shut on Lizzie’s side and bolted shut from Abby and Andrew’s master bedroom so it acted as part of the separating wall. The first floor consisted of a front entry with a solid, wooden door that was always triply locked, a sitting room, parlor, dining room, kitchen with stove and chimney, pantry and side entry way; a similar set of connecting doors provided access but since the rooms were for family use the doors were closeable but usually not fastened shut. The upstairs rooms to ensure privacy were more likely locked more often when the ‘inmates’ were upstairs but the master suite had its own entrance and stairway from the side door at the rear of the house. The ladies including Abby stayed at home when not at church, shopping or involved in their charity work. And Andrew, despite his pecuniary ways, employed an Irish girl who lived in the attic to assist with the housework. She received room and board sleeping above the Borden’s master bedroom suite and a salary which increased from $2 to $6 weekly. Her name was Bridget Sullivan but everyone except Abby in the Borden household called her ‘Maggie’ after the previous domestic servant employed. The family members apparently had trouble moving on from what they had called the previous servant and whether as a jest or an unwillingness to adjust the nickname ‘Maggie’ stuck; whether Bridget minded was not noted. In June 1891, a mysterious robbery in Andrew and Abby’s bedroom occurred and it intensified the locking rituals among the family members. The theft occurred in the middle of the day and although the women were home no one heard or saw anything. When Police Captain Dennis Desmond arrived to investigate an agitated Lizzy led him around and showed him the lock on the cellar door in the basement. Its lock had been tampered with and forced open by a ‘6 or 8 penny nails’ suggested the young lady and it looked that ‘someone may have come into the house that way.’ The policeman was stunned that the thief could have been so fortuitous in breaking in, finding the valuables on the second level and absconding off with them absolutely undetected by the women in the otherwise quiet household. Notified of the robbery, Andrew reviewed the incident with Captain Desmond and itemized the loss. Abby’s jewelry drawer had been rifled open and in addition to jewelry being missing was a gold watch with chain of considerable worth that was also a sentimental piece for Abby; Andrew inspected his desk and calculated that $80 in cash, $30 in gold coins and several commemorative streetcar tickets that he had collected were gone. Andrew was circumspective; after surveying the situation he concluded that the intruder had to enter through Lizzie’s bedroom door and he told Desmond: “I am afraid the police will not be able to find the real thief.” Desmond recalled that Mr. Borden repeated this three times and the officer held back from voicing his opinion when Andrew asked him to call off the investigation. Andrew also used his influence to attempt to squelch the story from appearing in the newspapers. Though it was suppressed the effect of the robbery lingered. Andrew and Abby unfailingly locked their bedroom from that time onward and Andrew every day before he left for work would leave the key in the sitting room conspicuously out in the open on the mantel in case someone in the household in an emergency had to gain access. His suspicions never left him and his youngest daughter sensing his mistrust played along by moving heavy furniture pieces to block her side of the adjoining doorway. Andrew had tried to assuage his youngest daughter with what for him most had been extravagant gifts. In 1890, just prior to Lizzie’s 30th birthday he sent her with her distant cousin across the Atlantic on a grand tour of Europe. Little did he know that she swore to her cousin Anna during the return voyage one night in their shared cabin that she was unwilling to return to Second Street household. She hated her stepmother and the house was besieged by unresolved, festering tensions. Her father’s disposition to assist his wife’s family in monetary matters angered her, particularly how he deprived both Emma and herself of what they felt that their status deserved. Upon her return home her father Andrew presented Lizzie with a pricy, seal-skin cape. Despite her declarations of never returning, Lizzie did return to the Borden household and the extravagant gift may or may not have been a reason. Her father’s reason for such singular gifts including the European adventure must had been to placate her unmarried daughter who at thirty was approaching the spinsterhood status of her eldest sister who was 9 years older. The typical young lady of the Fall River Protestant elite was married at age 22 years. Although rather plain-looking, why the Borden sisters were unmarried was not known. Later, some suggested that Lizzie was lesbian but that was never more than speculative gossip. It was probably most accurate that given the acceptable mores and norms during the early 1890s that only the elder, married Abby Borden was the only sexually active among the female Bordens on Second Street and I suspect that may have been an unconscious, unspoken and perhaps unrealized ‘ brick in the wall of resentment’ that was built up between the younger and eldest Borden ladies. Was the daughter’s anger really about not having access to suitable beaus due to their father’s refusal to join the social circles of the city’s elite? Who knows? Lizzie and Emma may have had a prominent Yankee name but whether they admitted it or not they were considered by many to be of the Bordens of a lesser god-----Their great-grandfather, Mr. Richard Borden, inherited less money than his brother Mr. Thomas Borden and his descendants did not flourish as well. Lizzie had a capacity to delude herself in her belief in her family’s hierarchal position at the pinnacle of the Protestant elite; her perception was an overreach. Her father was rich but his assets paled to those of the heirs of Thomas Borden in Fall River. Lizzie’s grandfather, Abraham Borden, was a fishmonger who supported his family but left to his son, Andrew, only the family home at 12 Ferry Street. Andrew parlayed that into a sizable fortune but it was nothing compared to his wealthier cousin Colonel Richard Borden whose heirs inherited stocks worth from 3 to 4 million dollars. Lizzie was christened Lizzie Andrew Borden and like her namesake she was resolute, straightforward and she had a special relationship with him; he wore no wedding ring but when his daughter Lizzy presented him a thin, gold band he wore it on his finger until his death. She may have had to ask her father 3 or 4 times but Lizzy admitted despite his cheapness she usually got from him what she really wanted. Abby, Emma and Lizzie received the same monetary allowance but his wife’s stipend went toward household expenses and not small extravagances like that of her stepdaughters. Lizzy confided only in her sister Emma and Abby could endure much and not complain about it. Neither daughter, when angry with her, would speak to their stepmother except to answer a direct question. Mrs. Borden endured a lesser status that diminished her influence over the household, her husband controlled the purse-strings and his adult daughters formed an alliance against her to minimize her influence allowing them to tolerate her presence. Emma who was 14 years old when her father remarried after the death of their mother, his first wife, Sarah Morse Borden----always called her Abby, never mother. Sarah was a farmgirl who married Andrew on Christmas day 1845. Her family did not provide a dowry to Andrew but she bore him 3 infant girls. Emma and Lizzie survived but she herself died of ‘uterine congestion and disease of the spine’ in late winter of 1863. Abby being a 37-year old spinster from a family that was always in need of money found Andrews offer of marriage appealing; he needed a wife and mother for his daughters. Emma never accepted her as a maternal substitute and saw Abby as a usurper in the Borden household. “When my darling mother was on her death-bed she summoned me, and exacted a promise that I would always watch over ‘Baby Lizzie.’”Abby Borden had a half-sister, Mrs. Sarah Whitehead, that needed financial help in buying out their father’s wife Jane Gray’s share of the house left that was bequeath to them at his death. Andrew Borden, in a gesture to his wife, purchased Mrs. Gray’s half interest and put the title in Abby Borden’s name and she in kind allowed her half-sister and husband to live there without paying rent to her. No good deed goes unpunished and the Borden sisters were irate. They were his own blood not Abby’s relations. Emma later admitted that she not Lizzie felt the most aggrieved by Abby’s gift of property from Andrew. Andrew now caught in a bind transferred the title of equal value into his daughter’s name and then he bought it back from them for $5000. The attempt at appeasement failed. The deal did little to defuse the situation and Bridget Sullivan normally resorted to serving two sittings for dinner because Emma and Lizzie avoided eating with the older couple. In early Spring 1892, Lizzie rebuked her dressmaker for referring to Abby as her mother:” Don’t say that to me, for she is a mean good-for-nothing thing.” The Borden sisters felt that Abby was a deceitful two-face. Mrs. Jane Gray told Abby, her stepdaughter, that she would not want to be in her position for any sum of money. If one argues with a stranger no matter what the hostility both parties go their own way. The situation in a such a conflicted home resulted in a cancerous strain of unresolved hostility. Day, evening and night---day after day---the underlying tensions wrought stress on the psyches of the residents. For whatever reason, legitimate or foul, Lizzie bought a new, factory-made hatchet that was ornamented with a gilt metal. When she purchased it and where exactly no one is sure; did it come from a downtown General Merchandise store? The Borden property had pear trees and besides burning coal in the cellar furnace they had a wood bin in the basement for storing fireplace wood. Did she buy it with other household items? No one noticed anything unusual because she hid it, and then, did nothing. The basement had older ax heads and hatchets especially one hatchet of similar blade size that had missing wooden handle sheared off in a clean cut about one inch below the weighted blade. On Wednesday August 3rd, 1892 she tried to make a purchase that did not go unnoticed, nor did it go unchallenged. Lizzie walked to D.R. Smith’s Drugstore on South Main Street and asked the druggist Mr. Eli Bence for a dime’s worth of a 2% prussic acid solution. She had no prescription so he refused her request but she told the druggist that she wanted to put it on the edge of her sealskin cape. He refused again also citing that it had no purpose for such cleaning and being a 2 % solution of hydrocyanic acid, it was deadly poison that was fast-acting, colorless, volatile, and almost undetectable. In 1837, a physician described it as fit only for suicide and occasionally a prescription was written to put a suffering family cat out of its misery but less than one teaspoonful was fatal to a human. In the latter 19th century, it was given extremely diluted as an antispasmodic or as a tranquilizer to recalcitrant patients but because of its toxicity its use was extremely limited. That night, Lizzie visited with family friend and former neighbor, Alice Russel, and planted clues about enemies of her father who might wish him or his loved one’s harm. She confessed to Alice that she was melancholic with a feeling of dread suspended over her that she was unable to shake. Her uncle Mr. John V. Morse had arrived after lunch that same Wednesday and left to tour the Borden’s Swansea farm at 3 PM. He returned that same night and slept in the upstairs guestroom. Bridget Sullivan locked the wooden back door and its screen door before retiring and found both locked the following morning. Her sister Emma had been summering by the seashore in Fairhaven for nearly two weeks visiting with friends. The Borden family had been experiencing the Fall River ‘summer complaint’ since Tuesday’s supper of leftover swordfish. Bridget and Lizzie had mild symptoms but Abby and Andrew spent a sleepless night with diarrhea, nausea and vomiting. Abby was alarmed in that she felt her GI distress was not typical and immediately the next morning she went to Dr. Seabury Bowen’s at his house situated right across the street. She feared that she had been poisoned! The physician, in light of the oppressive heat, was dismissive believing that it was a common food toxin from the fish dinner. She persuaded the physician to come back with her to check on her ailing husband but Andrew upon seeing the physician angrily blocked his way and shouted out to him that he was not going to pay for a home call. That night, however, the household again fell ill after a supper of mutton stew, all except Lizzie. Lizzie upon her visit to Mrs. Russel house that night also confided her fears that the milk had been poisoned. Mrs. Russell felt that no one would be so brazen out of fear of being seen. Lizzie spoke of her father’s enemy who after being refused by Andrew as a tenant he had responded ‘sneeringly’ as her father ordered him out. She had seen at night a strange man lurking in shadows around the house. More troublesome was that the barn had been broken into twice. Alice Russel assured her that they were neighborhood boys who were hunting the pigeons. In May, Andrew to prevent further shenanigans broke the necks of the pigeons in the attic coop, Lizzie had seen the birds in the kitchen some with their heads off. Andrew felt it was imprudent to feed animals unless they would someday feed him. She returned to the Borden residence at 9 PM and went straight upstairs to her bedroom. Andrew and her uncle sitting downstairs conversing heard someone going up the front stairs. Mr. Morse upon his return from Swansea that evening also had been told by his brother-in-law Andrew that the milk might had been adulterated. It was later speculated that Lizzie may have viewed the illnesses as an opportunity to exploit and that prompted her visit to the apothecary shop. The morning of August 4th, Bridget awoke suffering from a dull headache. Nonetheless she was in the kitchen and had unlocked the backdoor prior to Abby coming down at 6:30 AM followed by Andrew five minutes later who immediately placed his bedroom key on the sitting room mantel before going outside to empty his chamber-pot. Upon his return he brought in a small basket of pears, washed his hands and then joined his wife and brother-in-law for breakfast. Mr. Morse would later say there was nothing stingy or mean about the breakfast fare. It consisted of hot coffee and tea, cornmeal johnnycakes, slices of cold mutton and mutton soup! Once they had finished, the men went outside in the backyard. Morse left the house right after their sit-down breakfast around 8:40 AM to visit other relatives; and, despite sleeping in adjacent bedrooms neither he nor his niece Lizzie greeted one another that night or the next morning upon awakening; it was an oddity that mirrored the dysfunction in the household----Morse, her biological uncle, was visiting with Andrew and Abby and as such was not her houseguest. Uncle and niece avoided each other mirroring the separateness and the strangeness of the estrangement that existed among the permanent family members in residence within the household. Andrew returned, retrieved his bedroom key and then took a small wash bowl full of water upstairs. As Bridget washed the breakfast dishes Lizzie came down with her own chamber-pot. She came downstairs in a blue, cotton dress that although fairly new had been stained with paint on its hem in May. Lizzie meanwhile had coffee and cookies for her breakfast, but Bridget feeling queasy ran outside to vomit. She returned feeling better in 10 minutes or so. She brought the clean and toweled plates to the dining room for stacking where Abby who was dusting asked her to wash the windows. Andrew also left the house just after 9 AM. The maid retrieved a bucket and brush from the basement. Bridget followed Abby’s instructions to wash the outside windows which was an arduous task considering her sickness and the rising morning heat, but she washed the glass panels while chatting with the housemaid that worked next door. She went to the backyard barn 6 to 7 times to refill the bucket with clean water. Lizzy seeing Bridget just outside the backdoor told her that if she was going to be there washing the windows, she need not lock the backdoor because she was going to be around. Then backtracking, she said Bridget could lock it if she wanted. Bridget after finishing the exterior moved inside to clean that side of the glass windows but after finishing the job she was spent. She early on had noticed Lizzie passing through the kitchen but did not have a clue on her whereabouts later on that morning. Bridget went up to her attic room to lie down getting a head start on her Thursday half-days when she had afternoons off duty. Lizzy in the first part of that morning decided to iron handkerchiefs after talking to Abby who was headed back upstairs to freshen up the guestroom; she had already changed the bedsheets and only needed to put new bedcovers on the shams. She also planned to close the guestroom because she was expecting new visitors on Monday. Lizzy later stated that she sprinkled her handkerchiefs, took the ironing board to the dining room, read parts of Harper’s magazine and The Providence Journal as she waited for her flat irons to heat on the kitchen stove. She thought but wasn’t quite positive that she may have munched on another cookie while she waited. What she really did or subsequently did in addition was startlingly more entailed if not fiendish. It seems that Lizzie had supervised the paint mixing with Mr. John Grouard, the hired housepainter when the house was repainted that May. She also approved his test color patch on the wood siding of the house. The housedress although newly made that same month by their dressmaker Mary Raymond was cut from cheap cotton fabric and its hem became stained with paint. The dress was becoming with a blouse waist, full skirt, straight widths and a ruffle around its bottom. Lizzie was dressed to kill and with her sharp, new hatchet she ambushed her 64-year old stepmother as she straightened up the guestroom bed. Shocked Abby knew what and who hit her, she stood directly facing her attacker and the 200-pound woman after receiving a blow to the base of her neck fell face first with a loud, shudder to the thinly-carpeted floor. The door was closed shut but the fall of the plump woman reverberated throughout the house----no one other than the assailant was in the home to hear the fall, who now straddled the women’s prostrate body, which layed with face downward toward the floor, and started to wail blows on the sides and back of her victim’s head. Abby was pummeled by Lizzie who wielded her sharp, hatchet as she stood astride her body that was lodged between in the space between the bureau and the bed. Blood splatter was an impossibility to avoid as Lizzie assaulted her stepmother with a flurry of 17 hatchet blows. She was found later lying on the left side of her bruised, distorted and contused face. A bloody handkerchief lay next to Abby’s head. When she was found later that morning the blood on her head was matted and dried, parts of it found straggled out in ‘a ropy, gooey consistency.’ Her wounds were many, 13 of which penetrated her skull bone and ranged from one-half inch to a gash five and one-half inches long; the right side of her skull had been partially crushed. Abby Borden was dead probably no later than 9:30 AM. Lizzie hurriedly left the murder room, quietly closed its door, changed her bloodstained dress and hid it in a pail that contained her fresh menstrual cloths in her bedroom and hid her weapon in some nook or cranny; she calmed herself and rehearsed in her mind what she was going to say--------she all along had been setting the scene so that she could blame an intruder, an outsider-----but the brutal killing, the trauma, bloodshed that she had perpetrated----all but wrecked her confidence in what she had anticipated to say and do as a plausible excuse happen would work. Especially with her father who she had sensed was doubtful of her role in the previous bedroom robbery. Despite her resolve and execution of the crime, she was fearful that no one especially her father would swallow her alibi. Distracted, upset she never finished the ironing which at most was a ten-minute job. When Andrew returned from his business down-city, his key was not turning the front door lock so he knocked forcefully and repeatedly. Bridget who had not yet finished with the interior window washing attended to the knocking but when she attempted to unlock it, she cursed because initially it jammed. Lizzie laughed from upstairs from the top landing of the staircase although she never saw her. Andrew was let in, and Lizzie volunteered that a boy had come with a message for Abby that her friend was sick and needed help; Abby left soon after in response to the summons. No note was ever found, no boy came forward as a messenger, and no one in spite of the notoriety of the murder case ever stepped forward as authoring the summons. It did buy Lizzie time in that no one felt compelled to search the house for Abby, and as a logical reason for not doing so that she used later for an excuse. Sensing her 69-year old father was weary, still not fully recovered from the recent bouts with food poisoning, she directed him to the sitting room to rest or nap. Mr. John V. Morse was expected back for lunch but no sooner than 12 noon. He lay on the sofa, and his daughter later testified that she assisted him in removing his black boots and put on his slippers. Crime scene photographs negate her claim for he died in those boots. Turning her attention to Bridget, she told of her of a sale of dry goods at Sargent’s department store and urged her to go, but the girl still weak from her morning work and in light of her early morning ‘sickness,’ declined and went up to her attic room to rest. She retreated through the first floor to the rear staircase to climb to the 3rd floor. She remembered that Lizzie asked her father about the mail delivery as Andrew went into the sitting room to nap on the sofa, and Lizzie went back to finish up her ironing in the dining room. With Bridget gone, Lizzie left the ironing board, locked the front door, checked on her dozing father, ran upstairs, changed into her early morning dress now stained with paint and Abby’s blood and got her bloodstained hatchet. Lizzie dispatched her napping father with ten wounds to the skull with penetrations ranging from two inches to four and one-half inches and he received a crushing blow by his left ear. She was unaware of it, and grossly preoccupied, but some of the ornamental gilt metal—the gold leaf-- that gave the blade its sheen had been scraped off. It left a residue within the skull wounds of Abby Borden, but not enough was left to be evident in Andrew’s wounds. Her head and Andrews were decapitated during the autopsies at Oak Grove Cemetery on August 11th by the Bristol County Medical Examiner, Dr. William Dolan, and his son would later recount how lobster pots submerged at the family home cleaned off the flesh from bone. Lizzie for her part just after the patricidal attack now was intent on constructing her alibi. She hid the ax at least temporarily in a hiding place within the house that she knew so well in some nook or cranny that she knew no one would find ever find. She pulled off her ‘Bedford cord’ cotton dress again and put it in her menstrual pail and changed into a similar blue dress outfit. Her sister Emma would later give testimony that was quite detailed about the sister’s dresses and wardrobe that the sisters shared in their bedrooms’ one clothes closet. Of the 18 to 19 dresses hanging on a rack ten were some shade of blue; two being Emma’s and the rest belonging to Lizzy. The blue ‘Bedford cord’ dress, Emma said, had been fashioned by their dressmaker in May, from 8 to 9 yards of 12 ? to 15 cent a yard fabric; it was, she declared under testimony “very dirty, very much soiled and badly faded with a paint stain along the front of its hem and also on one side toward the bottom.” Bridget Sullivan did the laundry on Mondays but the paint remained, and despite the stain Lizzie from May had continue to wear it on some mornings. Emma also was unable or unwilling to say that it was unusual that a thrifty Yankee household containing three women with a sewing machine did not economize by salvaging fabric pieces by maintaining a rag bag. But by then when she testified to the District Attorney, she already knew that her accused sister had burnt that cheap dress. Of course, the glaring question then put to her by the prosecutors was why Lizzy on the Sunday after the murders chose that time to destroy it when it had been still suitable to wear as a housedress for two months? But I diverse, Lizzie hurried downstairs with the pail containing the bloody towels and her now blood-spotted housedress to the wash cellar and filled it with cold water from the faucet and left the pail there for its contents to soak. Later Lizzie when asked about the soaking pail deferred identifying it as containing menstrual cloths instead directing Officer William Medley to her physician, Dr. Bowen who as stated lived across Second Street and had been sent for immediately after the bodies were found. He vouched for her telling the officer that it had been there for several days and ‘it had been explained to him, and was alright.” Bridget Sullivan claimed that despite Lizzie saying that it was there for two days that she never saw until it until that day—Thursday—for if she had she would have put the bloody strips of towels into the laundry. Lizzy was inhibited from hiding or destroying the Bedford cord dress because she knew of her sister Emma’s memory, she was correctly apprehensive Emma could thoroughly catalog their joint wardrobe closet’s inventory. At her June 1893 criminal trial, Emma defended her sister by claiming that on Saturday August 6th ---the funeral day---it was her idea that Lizzy destroy the paint stained dress because she could not find a hook for her own clothing: “You have not destroyed the old dress yet; why don’t you?” When Lizzie announced on Sunday, August 7th, she was going to burn the ‘Bedford cord’ dress Emma testified that she seconded the idea. She also affirmed that the task was completed in the kitchen stove with the windows open wide and the police milling around in the backyard. Alice Russel account of the dress burning was more damning to Lizzie Borden and her account of its burning told by Alice to the grand jury ended their long friendship. She being a good Christian woman did not take her actions lightly but she had great remorse in omitting the incident in her inquest testimony to the grand jury. She regretted not telling ‘the whole truth’ and consulted her attorney who contacted the district attorney. Hosea Knowlton scheduled her return to the witness stand and she told him that on that Sunday morning following the Thursday crime she witnessed Lizzie by the stove and she asked her what she was doing. Lizzie answered, “I am going to burn the old thing up; it is covered in paint.” Alice saw that it was the cheap Bedford cord and left the kitchen; she had second thoughts and promptly returned and warned the girl: “I wouldn’t let anyone see me do that, Lizzie.” The dress nevertheless was burned. On Monday morning, O.M. Hanscom, the Pinkerton detective the family hired the day following the murders to investigate and protect their interests, questioned Alice about Lizzie’s wardrobe and if all her dresses were still remaining in the house. Nervously, she recounted the questioning to Lizzie and Emma in the dining room: “I am afraid, Lizzie, the worst thing you could have done was to burn that dress. I have been asked about your dresses.” Lizzie countered, turning the tables back on Alice, “Oh, what made you let me do it.” After her grand jury testimony, Alice Russell stopped visiting her in the jail as if her recounting of the incriminating facts made her more cognizant of her friend’s possible culpability. Emma would later try to diminish Alice Russell describing her as a ‘calling friend’ and not an ‘intimate friend’ but hadn’t Alice Russel stayed with them for four nights after the murders? And it was Alice that accompanied Lizzie Borden’s rather creepy trip to the dark cellar that first night. Spine-tingling or not, it was witnessed by the patrolman, Mr. Joseph Hyde, that was on detail assignment to watch the house until 11 PM on Thursday August 4th. As he stood there posted as a sentry, he looked through the cellar window and through the small, oblong cellar window saw Alice Russel and Lizzie Borden descending down the staircase. The late setting summer Sun had sunk beneath the horizon and the night was dark around a quarter to nine. In her hand, Alice carried a lamp for illumination but she hesitated and stopped at the base of the stairwell. Miss Lizzie carried a toilet pail and she first approached the water closet to empty the chamber pot. She then went to the sink, turned the faucet and rinsed the pail out, all was done in a perfectly natural way except that Alice lingered reluctant to go further. He could see clearly through the window as they both returned upstairs. About 15 minutes later, Lizzie came back downstairs alone and went straight to the sink. He could not see fully what she was doing as she stooped before it for several minutes. Defense lawyer Robinson emphasized that was where the bloody menstrual towels in the pail were soaking inferring that hygienic task was the complete rationale for her trip. That pail also contained the blood splatter she had wiped off her skin with wet towels from both of her victims. Officer Hyde was unaware that earlier that same evening Officer Phil Harrington puzzled by her contradictions as to Lizzie’s whereabouts at the time of her father’s death and his interview afterwards conducted in her bed chamber, was struggling to find the strength to voice his suspicion. “Lizzie stood by the foot of the bed, and talked in the calmest and collected manner, no sign of sorrow, no lamentation of heart, no comment on the horror of the crime and no expression that the criminal be caught.” He added, “I thought, at least, she knew more than she wished to tell.” Dr. Seabury Bowen, the physician was a family friend who 4 years previously when the Borden family except for Lizzie was summering at their farmstead in Swansea escorted her to the Congregational Church that the sisters usually attended one Sunday evening not knowing that his accompanying would cause much gossip. After the murder, he advised the police to give daughter Lizzie a few moments to compose herself closing Lizzie’s door in their face. He was observed later in the Borden’s kitchen trying to fit together torn scraps of paper from a note that he told Officer Harrington was from his own daughter. He tossed the paper fragments on the hot stove and as it flamed Harrington read the name Emma; Dr. Bowen’s daughter it turned out was named Florence. Was he just the family doctor or was he trying to divert attention from possible suspects within the household? There was another letter of importance, one that Lizzie herself earlier in the week and sent to Elizabeth Johnson who refused to discuss its contents when questioned by police. Lizzie had written to postpone her visit to Marion party of lady friends, if she had left as planned, she would had been away on Thursday August 4th. Lizzie said the delay was necessary because she as secretary-treasurer of the Christian Endeavor Society, she felt obliged to attend a meeting on Sunday July 31st. After the Sunday meeting she instead of departing to meet up with her friends penned the note. None of the ladies when later questioned would speak of what it said. Elizabeth Johnson consulted Andrew Jennings, one of Lizzie’s defense attorneys, who assured her that if she did not want to, she did not have to answer police inquiries about what was written. In September 14th, the Fall River Daily Herald printed that the note was burned by the recipient because it might be incriminating, misconstrued she believed, in light of the tragedy that had since transpired. Excited about the holiday, wanting to do her part in required duties on their vacation at the cottage, Lizzie Borden volunteered to chop wood for the kitchen stove because she had a ‘very sharp hatchet’ that she owned. The prosecutor Knowlton when informed of the column by Officer Harrington ‘discounted its authenticity.’ Elizabeth Johnson, Anna & Mary Holmes, Isabel Frazier, Louise & Mabel Remington would not discuss it when questioned by investigators. Elizabeth who at first visited her arrested friend in jail, stopped going as she learned more of the details of the deadly incident. Lizzie regrouped, changed her attire as said earlier, went back to the kitchen to make a show of ironing those handkerchiefs a job that despite its simplicity she never finished, then made a beeline out the side door into the backyard and into the barn. She climbed to the loft which as the morning waned on, was now becoming hot with the air approaching stifling. The police when searching the barn loft twice after the funeral service on Saturday August 6th and on Sunday August 7th found it almost suffocating. Lizzy claimed that in anticipation of an upcoming planned fishing trip in Marion with friends, after leaving her father to nap, she had spent 15 to 20 minutes looking for lead to fashion into fishing sinkers. She lingered there to eat 3 freshly picked pears that she had just picked from the backyard trees before heading to the upper story of the barn. She not finding the lead, went to the window facing west, adjusted the curtain and gazing out ate her pears. She later recounted how she had seen the lead there nearly 5 years before. The fishing rods and reels, line and fishing gear, was not stored on Second Street but was rather waiting to be retrieved from the Swansea farm. She had told Alice Russell, one of the first to converse with her after the murders were discovered that she had gone searching in the loft for ‘some tin or lead’ to repair a broken window screen.’ Officer Phil Harrington after searching the barn and loft, would tell his fellow officer Mr. john Fleet: “If any girl can show you or me, or anybody else what could interest her up here for 20 minutes, I would like to have her do it.” Fleet could only mutter in agreement that it was ‘incredible.’ Later, at the inquest even Lizzie Borden’s supporters found it painful to hear her testimony about why and when she went to the barn. District Attorney Hosea Knowlton read for 2 hours her inquest testimony into the record because it was unconvincing, conflicting and definitively raised doubts as of her whereabouts. She was witnessed Thursday morning as she came from the barn back to the house by Mr. Lubinsky, he knew it was not Bridget Sullivan because he had sold that girl ice-cream from his wagon several weeks before just after 11 AM; although he provided unanticipated comedy at her trial due to the language barrier, stable owner Charles Gardner where Lubinsky boarded his horses, corroborated Lubinsky’s assessment stating the peddler left the stable precisely at ten minutes past 11 AM. On August 4th, next door neighbor Mrs. Adelaide Churchill, as she prepared to go food shopping at Hudson’s market, she saw Andrew Borden leaving on his walk. On her return, she saw Bridget Sullivan running back from Dr. Bowen’s house. Unloading her bagged groceries, she looked out of the kitchen window and was startled to see a frenetic Lizzie leaning against her door. “What’s the matter Lizzie? Lizzy answered, “Oh, Mrs. Churchill, do come over. Someone has killed father.” She denied that the dark blue dress shown her at the trial was the outfit Lizzie wore at her kitchen door. Although she also denied knowing what was “Bedford cord,’ she had a memory for the cotton dress Miss Lizzy was wearing: “a light blue and white mixed groundwork woven together with a dark navy diamond figure on which there was no spot of blood on it.” It was she who had prompted the search for Abby Borden and both herself and John V. Morse who had returned to find a commotion instead of lunch, had seen her body as they climbed up a few stairs as they could look under the door-jam; Dr. Bowen who was preceded them missed seeing the body lying on the floor of the guestroom. She later told defense attorney Robinson in trial testimony that Lizzy “appeared distressed…and frightened.” Dr. Bowen summoned by Bridget, had been the first to examine Andrew’s badly cut, bloody face, his dead body which was oddly positioned he described as “apparently at ease, as anyone who would be if they were lying asleep.” He questioned Lizzy if she had seen anything and she said she had been in the backyard barn---the only sure place on the property insulated from what happenings that might have occurred within the Borden house. Dr. Bowen reported the homicide to Officer Allen, now at the house. He also rushed off to telegraph Emma in Fairhaven. Upon his return, Mrs. Churchill told him of their search for Abby and that her body was lying upstairs. Lizzy went upstairs and changed into a pink wrapper and she fielded questions dressed as such. At the inquest, Dr. Bowen described Lizzie’s dress as a drab blue calico: “it was an ordinary, unattractive, common dress that I didn’t notice specifically.” Defense attorney Robinson at the trial recalled Bridget Sullivan for clarification. Who testified that Lizzie Borden wore a blue calico dress printed with a clover-leaf figure but when she ran upstairs to the maid’s attic room to awaken her, she was wearing a plain gingham, blue dress, adorned with a white border. The prosecution at Lizzie’s June 1893 murder trial would sinisterly emphasize that Lizzy wore two blue dresses that morning. They also used Bridget’s testimony to show how unlikely that an outsider could have come murdered Abby, waited hiding unnoticed in the occupied Borden house and then kill Andrew an hour, hour-and one half later or two hours later. Now everyone on the streets of Fall River had their suspects and some theorized that it was the visitor that did the killings. The police had to rescue Andrew’s brother-in-law from a mob of vigilantes that followed him around after a newspaper column named him as a suspect. His neighbors back home described him as “a very eccentric and peculiar man.” That may have been true but he memorized the streetcar number and the number on the conductor’s cap that he was on at the time of Andrew’s murder. Six priests were his fellow passengers and uncannily Dr. Bowen---the very same Borden neighbor and family physician---made a house call to treat Mrs. Daniel Emery’s daughter at 11:30 AM or so—as Morse exiting his relative’s house to return to Second Street for lunch! He may have appeared as shifty as a Western cattle rustler but his alibi was rock solid. Not everyone in Fall River suspected an outside assassin; Mr. Hiram Harrington—Lizzie’s uncle who was not on good terms with her family, made a bold prediction not only to the cops but also to a reporter for the Fall River Daily Globe: “When the perpetrator of this foul deed is found, it will be one of the household.” In another coincidence of unfathomable dimensions, Dr. William Dolan, the Bristol County medical examiner, happened to pass by the commotion at the Second Street Borden house on August 4th prior to noon. He was escorted to check Andrew’s body and besides observing bright red blood oozing from the ten or so head wounds he felt that the dead man’s hands were still warm. He went upstairs and examined Abby’s body which was much cooler than her spouse’s. The blood was dark and coagulated. Photographs were later taken by the investigators of the crime scene and the butchered bodies. Dolan stayed on determined to pinpoint the cause and times of death for both victims. First, he collected samples of that morning milk and the morning prior. He layed Andrew’s corpse on a mortician’s board in the same room and removed his stomach, and then the same for Abby. Both stomachs were packed in jars and were sent by express to Professor Wood—a chemist-- at Harvard, along with the milk. The Bordens’ funeral service was held on Saturday August 6th but after the family members departed from Oak Grove Cemetery the caskets were returned to the hearse by the police and stored in a vault. No burial took place as ordered by the county medical examiner, Dr. William Dolan; five days later, on Thursday August 11th, he and his Suffolk County counterpart, Dr. Frank W. Draper, autopsied the bodies in the cemetery’s ladies lounge. On August 9th, he personally delivered to Professor Wood samples of human hair, pieces of carpet from upstairs and downstairs and two wood axes and two hatchets, one with a hammer claw— found stored openly in the basement---and a package obtained from by police that contained what Lizzy had said she had worn the morning of August 4th. Wrapped up in the packaging were “a dress waist, a dress skirt, and an under white skirt” the last had one tiny spot of blood impregnated within it. During the 1893 criminal trial, Lizzie would describe her morning wear as “a navy blue, sort of Bengaline silk skirt with a navy-blue blouse.” On August 11th, he performed autopsies at Oak Grove Cemetery as previous detailed but besides decapitating the heads he removed and examined the intestines. Abby’s lower intestine was clear but there was undigested food from her breakfast in her small intestine. Her husband had no food in his small intestine but his colon was full of solid, well-formed feces. Dolan at the trial explained that the difference in digestion was a barometer for the difference for the times of death. Mrs. Borden pre-deceased Andrew by up to 2 hours. Furthermore, he testified that his conclusion was that the fatal blows could have been delivered with a hatchet by a female possessing ordinary strength. Upon examination, no poison was found in the victims’ stomachs. The milk samples from August 3 & 4 were not tainted. Using a stuck, bleeding dog as a testing subject, his experiments concluded that the rate of blood absorption and blood flow were equal on both carpet samples. The murder weapon was still missing because he found no human hair or blood on the axes and hatchets stored at the Borden house. The spot of blood that he measured as less than 1/32 of an inch was thicker on the outside than inside of the white undergarment but he could not rule out it being from Lizzie’s natural menstruation. Her defense attorney George D. Robinson agreed that his client’s monthly sickness ended Wednesday night as was further evidenced by the toilet pail found Thursday in the basement. Robinson did not want to elaborate further and was happy to move on from the sensitive topic because at many medical experts of the era felt that the ‘monthly illnesses’ triggered or augmented female criminal impulses. In his closing statement to the jury Attorney George D. Robinson emphasized that all who had seen her the morning of the murders that no one saw a spot of blood on her or her dress. “So, what if Lizzie burned a paint-stained dress at Emma’s suggestion?” Demeaning the prosecutions theory that the destroyed dress had served as a coverall he ridiculed them by saying that next the State’s argument against his client was that she murdered both victims in the nude. Mr. Julian Ralph, the journalist, had already publicly dismissed that thought as a ‘peculiar French ‘notion. He scoffed at the armory of possible murder weapons found in the Borden’s cellar; the axes, hatchets without handles, covered with animal hair, feathers and rust stains that suggested dried blood, stating that they were not the killing instruments. If it may have been physically possible for her to do it, he had to emphasize what he termed the ‘moral impossibility of her having done so.’ He was keenly aware that in Lizzie Borden’s courtroom demeanor-----her apparent detachment, her impressive composure, her lack of emotionality----all were damning in her harshest accusers’ eyes. He quoted a verse to neutralize suspicions caused by her stoic, unfazed demeanor: “The eyes that cannot weep/Are the saddest eyes of all.”Hosea Knowlton in his summary for the prosecution emphasized the cumulative effect in toto of the circumstantial evidence; he refuted that it was inferior to direct evidence. He explained that the prosecution’s case was based mainly on Lizzie Borden’s exclusive opportunity. No one from the outside could kill Abby at her early morning work, hide undetected hoping that her corpse would go unnoticed, then two hours later emerge to strike down Andrew. No less escape unseen, unheard from the crime scene! The lock system, however, burdensome, made it all but certain that no one could hide before the murders then just come and go. He retold Lizzie’s falsehood about the messenger summoning Abby:” No note came; no note was written; nobody brought a note; nobody was sick; Mrs. Borden had not had a note.” Obviously, the dead women had never left the house. The next day—the last day-- after Knowlton concluded the rest of his final summation. He added among other things, “We find a woman murdered by blows which were struck by a weak and indecisive hand…We find that woman had no enemies in all this world except the [step] daughter who had repudiated her…We get down now to the elements of ordinary crime. We get hatred, we get malice…we get absurd and impossible alibis. We get contradictory stories…we get fraud upon the officers by the substitution of an afternoon silk dress as the one [possibly two] she was wearing that morning ironing, and a guilty destruction of the dress that she feared the eye of the microscope might find blood upon.” On that last day of the trial, Tuesday, June 20, 1893, Chief Judge Mason spoke to the defendant” It is your privilege to add any word you may desire to say in person to the jury.” Lizzie rose, and clearly voiced: “I am innocent. I leave it to my counsel to speak for me.” Two men were hanged for murder in Massachusetts in early 1893 just prior to the Borden criminal trial. Walter Holmes on February 3rd and one month later William Coy, who ironically worked as a woodchopper, a man skilled with the saw, wedge and axe. Judge Dewey invoked a higher power to guide the jury’s deliberations, then Judges Dewey and Blodgett went outside for a stroll, leaving only Judge Mason to man the judges’ chamber. Lizzie Borden chatted with friends as he sat in the dock before taking a brief break. Less that an hour and one-half after beginning their deliberations, a verdict was reached. A straw ballot polled the choices of the jurist and from the start were unanimous. They discussed the evidence to perform their due diligence, made a final unanimous vote and out of respect for the District Attorney’s effort, they delayed their announcement for another 30 minutes. The Protestant elite, the ruling-class Yankee establishment, closed its ranks against outsiders and the jury’s decision echoed the collective silence of those in power who had firsthand insight into the murders to protect one of their own; Lizzie was a disgrace but the Borden murders and her sins were not going to lessen their apex ruling position especially as more immigrants including Portuguese, English, French-Canadian and Irish Catholics were changing the demographics of their city. The courtroom was silent denoting the fear in the courtroom as Lizzie Borden—nonplussed, reserved---returned to her seat. The jurors filed in `with stern countenances, somber, the clerk appeared tremulous: “When asked for the verdict, the foreman mid-sentence interrupted the questioner and blurted out “Not Guilty!” The courtroom exploded and the spectators assembled outside awaiting the decision answered back in a responding echoing cheer. The defendant shot back in her seat as if hit by a bullet, then she leaned forward onto the wooden rail, and putting her head down against it, she sobbed. The clerk shouted with emphasis: “Gentleman of the jury, you, upon your oaths, do say that Lizzie Borden, the prisoner at the bar, is not guilty?”“We do! answered each juror. “Say you, Mr. foreman, so say all of you?” A unanimous chorus followed: “We do”The trial was over at 4:38 PM. Knowlton and Moody, the prosecutors, walked over and congratulated the defense lawyers. Mr. Rufus B. Hilliard, the city’s police marshal, was vociferous in declaring the Borden case closed, inferring that the guilty party had been freed by the jury.In 1897, 5 years after the murders, a well-dressed woman walked into the Tilden-Thurber gallery on Westminster Street in Providence, Rhode Island. Hoping to get two painted Meissen porcelain plaque restored she was in for a surprise. The saleswoman, recognized the artworks as being stolen set pieces from their own establishment, notified her supervisor. The stunned client when confronted claimed that it was a gift from her Fall River friend, Miss Lizzie Borden. An arrest warrant was issued and the establishment demanded reimbursement, Lizzie Borden was not arrested after the involvement of her attorney but the picadillo caused by the alleged shoplifting made the newspapers. In Fall River, it was not news for those in the know; sales associates would find missing items after Borden’s shopping visits, itemize what was gone and an invoice was sent to Emma & Lizzie new residence at the top of the Hill district in the Spindle City. Soon after the verdict, Emma and Lizzie vacated the Second Street home even though they kept it as an investment property. The new residence was grander, larger, had electricity and indoor plumbing and was ensconced direct center in the city’s elite neighborhood. Lizzie christened the home, Maplecroft, its name chiseled onto the granite steps she added during its renovation and refurbishment. Naming mansions in Fall River, Fairhaven, Dartmouth, Westport, Falmouth, Hyannis and New Bedford was usually reserved for only the most prestigious residents and signage was considered gratuitous, if not crass. She abandoned her girlish name, changing Lizzy to Lizbeth. She maintained a pew, supporting her Central Congregational Church until 1905, where she had worshipped and taught immigrant children Sunday school before her ordeal, but many worshippers shunned her. She eventually dropped her Christian charities after feeling she was being ostracized. The working-class people were never on her side and the month after her acquittal a reporter for the Fall River Daily Globe published a book that exposed a lot of detail about the case and reinforced that Lizzie was the only serious suspect as the murderer. It catered to its Irish-Catholic readership by publishing an annual reminder of the notorious crime, always taunting in its dismissive tone toward her acquittal. Lizzie’s circle of friends shrank as the enthusiasm for her acquittal waned. Lizzy liked to go out traveling by coach and later in a chauffeured black Packard. Early on there was talk about her being involved with her young, handsome coachman, Joseph Tetrault. He was popular with the ladies and worked for the Borden sisters for 6 years; in 1896 and 1897 he boarded at Maplecroft. Emma dismissed him once but Lizzie intervened to have him returned to his job. Lizzie had an intense, although fairly short-lived friendship with the stage actress Nance O’Neil that scandalized her reserved sister Emma. Belying her previous temperance work, Lizzy once invited the production cast of one of Nance O’Neil’s plays for a grand party that featured a full orchestra and champagne. She loaned the actress money to hold her over when in litigation with her stage manager. Lizzie had an infatuation with stagecraft and those involved with theatrical productions. Emma was appalled given their temperance work, and she complained to Reverend Buck about how she disapproved of the intolerable situation at Maplecroft. Eventually, she reluctantly took his advice to make herself a new home elsewhere. Emma moved out in 1905 and rarely spoke to her sister afterwards but even after the break, she defended her. “Queer, Yes, Lizzie is queer [odd]. But as for her being guilty, I say no, and decidedly, no.”Despite her isolation, Lizzie never abandoned her home in Fall River. She enjoyed the theatre in Boston, the entertainment in New York, shopping in Providence. She fed the squirrels, chipmunks and birds in her secluded backyard, loved her Boston Terriers and befriended the children of her domestic staff. Ice cream in nearby Tiverton, Rhode Island and birthday presents from Auntie Borden brightened their days. She quietly contributed to charities. In 1926, a Mary Smith Borden checked into a Providence hospital for gall bladder issues, the newspapers identified her as Lizzie. She suffered poor health for one year and died of pneumonia in her home on June 1, 1927. She left instructions to be buried in the family plot, “at my Father’s feet.” Her sister Emma died just ten days later, and her remains were interred there too so the family was reunited in death lying less than two miles from their home on Second Street. She left $30, 000 to the Fall River Animal Rescue League as well as $500 in trust for the perpetual upkeep of Andrew Borden’s gravesite, her Dad. By R. Anthony Saritelli August 15th, 2020.References: Robertson, C. The Trial of Lizzie Borden-A True Story. Simon & Schuster. New York. 2019Lizzie Borden-WikipediaWeafer, D. The Long Silence of Lizzie Borden. [from 1996 Classic revisited] New England Today. Yankee Magazine 01/21/2017.Nance O’Neil by WikipediaCarneal, Sarah. Blog: Lizzie Borden House: An Incredible Photo Tour of the Macabre. November 24, 2019. ................
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