Birth of Lizzie Borden
Lizzie Borden took an axe,
And gave her mother forty whacks.
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.
The Lizzie Borden murder case, is one of the most famous in American criminal history.
The identity of the murderer, was immortalised by the children’s rhyme, passed down across generations.
While there is no doubt that Lizzie Borden committed the murders, the rhyme is not quite correct.
Abby, was Lizzie’s stepmother, and a hatchet, rather than an axe, served as the weapon.
Less than half the blows in the rhyme, were actually used to murder the victims.
19 blows rained down on Abby, and ten more rendered 69-year-old Andrew’s face unrecognisable.
Still, the rhyme does accurately record the sequence of the murders, which took place approximately an hour and a half apart, on the morning of the 4th August 1892.
Lizzie’s crime happened in Fall River, Massachusetts – a textile mill town 50 miles south of Boston.
Fall River was rocked, not only by the sheer brutality of the crime, but also by who its victims were.
Andrew Borden was no ordinary citizen.
Like other Fall River Bordens, he possessed wealth and standing.
He had invested in mills, banks, and real estate.
Andrew never made a show of his good fortune.
He lived in a modest house, on an unfashionable street, instead of on “The Hill,” Fall River’s lofty, leafy, silk-stocking enclave.
Thirty-two-year-old Lizzie, who still lived at home, longed to reside on The Hill, with the more affluent members of society.
Lizzie knew her father could afford to move away from a neighbourhood she felt was inferior to their station.
In the hours after the discovery of the bodies, people only knew that the suspect had struck the victims at home.
In broad daylight, on a busy street, one block from the city’s business district.
There was no evident motive, no robbery or sExual assault.
Neighbours and passersby heard nothing.
No one saw a suspect enter, or leave the Borden property.
On the day of the murders, Lizzie claimed that she came into the house from the barn, and discovered her father’s body.
She yelled for the Bordens’ 26-year-old servant, Bridget “Maggie” Sullivan, who was resting upstairs in her third-floor room.
Lizzie sent Maggie across the street to the family doctor’s house.
He was not at home.
Lizzie then told Maggie to fetch her friend Alice, down the street.
When questioned about the murders, Lizzie’s answers to different police officers kept changing.
The heap of inconsistencies in Lizzie’s testimony, led her into self-incrimination.
Her inability to summon a single tear over the horrific deaths, also aroused police suspicion.
Then an officer discovered that Lizzie had tried to purchase deadly prussic acid in a nearby drugstore, a day before the murders.
Lizzie became their number one suspect.
Lizzie was not without defenders.
The family doctor staunchly believed in Lizzie’s innocence.
He testified that after the murders he prescribed a double dose of morphine to help Lizzie sleep.
Its side effects, he claimed, could account for Lizzie’s confusion about what happened that day.
Lizzie’s sister Emma, who also lived at home, claimed that the sisters harboured no anger or resentment toward their stepmother.
At the time of the murders, Emma was 15 miles away, on vacation
This left Lizzie and servant Maggie, the only ones left at home with Abby, after Andrew left on his morning business rounds.
Maggie claimed she was outside washing windows, the time when Abby was being slaughtered in the second floor guest room.
While Andrew Borden was bludgeoned in the first floor sitting room shortly after his return, Maggie was resting in her attic room.
Unable to account consistently for Lizzie’s movements, the judge, district attorney, and police marshal determined that Lizzie was “probably guilty.”
Lizzie was arrested on the 11th August, one week after the murders.
The judge sent Lizzie to the county jail.
This privileged suspect, found herself confined to a cheerless 9 ½-by-7 ½ foot cell, for the next nine months.
However, Lizzie’s arrest provoked an uproar, that quickly became national.
Women’s groups rallied to Lizzie’s side, and protested that she would not receive a fair trial.
She would be judged by a jury of men, because women, as non-voters, did not have the right to serve on juries.
Her legion of supporters was unable to consider what they saw as culturally inconceivable ~ a well-bred virtuous Victorian woman, could never commit patricide.
When her trial started, the small courtroom above the police station, was packed with Lizzie’s supporters – particularly women.
With her father’s money in hand, Lizzie could afford the best legal team to defend her.
A Harvard chemist reported that he found no blood on two axes and two hatchets, that police retrieved from the cellar.
Lizzie had turned over to the police the dress she allegedly wore, on the morning of the murders.
It had only a minuscule spot of blood on the hem.
As to the prussic acid, Lizzie was a victim of misidentification, they claimed.
Alice Russell, was Lizzie’s close friend.
Shortly after Andrew had been killed, Lizzie sent Bridget to summon Alice.
To support her friend, Alice had slept in the Borden house for several nights, after the murders, while the brutalized victims were stretched out on mortuary boards in the dining room.
Alice testified that on the Sunday morning after the murders, Lizzie pulled a dress from a shelf in the pantry closet, and proceeded to burn it in the cast iron coal stove.
The grand jury indicted Lizzie the next day……
To help her case, her lawyers told Lizzie that she wasn’t a helpless maiden.
She only needed to present herself as one….
They told her to dress in black.
Lizzie appeared in court tightly corseted, holding a bouquet of flowers in one hand, and a fan in the other.
One newspaper described her as quiet, modest, and well-bred.
She could not possibly possess the physical strength, let alone the moral degeneracy, to wield a weapon with skull-cracking force.
Half of the jurors on Lizzie’s case, were farmers, others were tradesmen.
Some with daughters approximately Lizzie’s age.
Not surprisingly the jury quickly decided to acquit her.
The courtroom audience, the bulk of the press, and women’s groups, cheered Lizzie’s acquittal.
Two months after the innocent verdict, Lizzie and Emma moved to a large Victorian house on The Hill.
Finally Lizzie was living where she had always wanted to be!
Lizzie enjoyed her new life as one of the elite on ‘The Hill’.
She travelled frequently, making shopping trips to Boston, New York, and Washington, D.C.
She entertained in style, and loved attending the theatre.
In 1904, Lizzie and her sister Emma, had a huge falling out.
Although they reconciled, tensions were fraught between the two, once close sisters.
Emma finally left the house in 1905, and evidently the sisters never saw each other again.
Lizzie died of pneumonia on 1st June 1927, in Fall River.
Funeral details were not published, and only a select few attended.
Nine days later, Emma died from chronic nephritis, in a nursing home.
They were both interred next to their father..
