Lizzie Borden
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- This article is about the 19th-century woman acquitted of murdering her parents. For other women named Lizzie Borden, see Lizzie Borden (disambiguation)
Lizzie Andrew Borden (July 19, 1860 – June 1, 1927) was a New England spinster who was tried for the brutal axe murders of her father and stepmother in the late 19th century. Although she was acquitted, she has remained a notorious figure, and dispute over whether she was guilty continues to this day.
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Before the murder
Lizzie Andrew Borden was born the youngest child of Andrew Jackson Borden and Sarah Morse Borden. Andrew was a well-to-do banker who owned considerable property in his home town of Fall River, Massachusetts. Lizzie's mother died when Lizzie was five years old, and a few years later Andrew married Abby Durfee Grey. It was rumored that Lizzie and her older sister Emma (who was out of town at the time of the murders) never felt warmly towards their stepmother. Both sisters admitted during their testimony that there was considerable ill-feeling when, a few years prior to the crime, Andrew put a piece of property in Abby's name. Prior to the rift, Emma Borden referred to her father's wife as "Abby", while Lizzie politely called her "mother". After Andrew Borden's first transfer of property into his wife's name, his daughters stopped acknowledging Abby altogether. When Andrew tried to smooth the waters by giving an equal amount of property to each daughter, both showed their gratitude by henceforth referring to their stepmother as "Mrs. Borden".
The murder and the trial
On August 4, 1892, Lizzie Borden, age 32, discovered the body of her father at the home at 92 Second Street in Fall River. Image:LBsHouse.gif She called to the family's maid Bridget Sullivan (who had been resting in her third floor room) to "come downstairs...father is dead...somebody got in and murdered him." After the arrival of family friend Alice Russell and "Dr. Bowen", neighbor Adelaide Churchill asked Lizzie where her mother was. "I don't know," Borden replied, continuing on "but what's she's been killed, too, for I thought I heard her come in." Russell suggested that someone look for Mrs. Borden, and Sullivan and Churchill were sent to the second floor. The two returned shortly thereafter confirming that Lizzie's stepmother was indeed upstairs and dead as well.
Both Bordens had been slain by multiple axe blows. Although the exact weapon was not named, and witnesses saw no trace of blood on Lizzie moments after the murder, a contingent case was mounted against her. At the inquest, a local pharmacist claimed that Lizzie attempted to purchase prussic acid from him a day before the crime. Then, at the grand jury hearing, incriminating evidence came from her friend, Alice Russell, who testified that Lizzie burned a stained dress, the defense claiming it was paint-stained, three days after the murders. But the most damning evidence came at the trial, when medical experts appeared to prove that Abby Borden was killed approximately an hour and a half before her husband, making it seem that the perpetrator was more likely to have been a member of the household than an outsider.
The preliminary hearing was held in late August 1892, and the grand jury heard testimony in late November and early December of the same year. The trial of Lizzie Borden began on June 5, 1893 and lasted two weeks. A turning point in the trial was the dramatic unveiling of the victims' rotting skulls; Lizzie fainted and won much sympathy from the all-male jury, who acquitted her on June 20, after only 68 minutes of deliberation.
Public reaction
The trial received a tremendous amount of national publicity, a relatively new phenomenon for the times. It has been compared to the later trials of Bruno Hauptmann and O.J. Simpson as a landmark in media coverage of legal proceedings.
The case was memorialized in a popular jump-rope rhyme:
- 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 anonymous rhyme was made up by a writer as an alluring little tune to sell newspapers even though in reality her stepmother suffered 19 blows, her father 10 — some believe that this has served to ensure Lizzie Borden's place in American folklore.
Later life
Apparently Lizzie was a great lover of the theater, animals, and poetry. Above her fireplace in Maplecroft was emblazoned the following:
And old-time friends & twilight plays And starry nights, and sunny days Come trooping up the misty ways When my fire burns low.
Many Fall River residents still believed in her guilt. As a result, she was ostracized to some degree. Lizzie and her sister Emma lived apart until their deaths in 1927.
Lizzie Borden died of complications from gall bladder surgery on June 1, 1927, at the age of sixty-six. Emma died nine days later. One-seventh of Lizzie's considerable estate was left to the Animal Rescue League of Fall River and the remainder to those friends and servants who stayed loyal to her over the years.
Legacy
Despite her acquittal, Lizzie Borden remains in popular imagination as a brutal murderess. This is due in part to the following
- The murders were never solved.
- For a number of years, on the anniversary of the murders, the more sensational press re-accused her of the crime.
- The infamous doggerel endured, insinuating her guilt into the public mind thereafter.
The home where the murders occurred is now a bed and breakfast which enjoys considerable popularity in Fall River, Massachusetts. The house features two suites consisting of the combined bedrooms of Lizzie and Emma and the combined bedrooms of Andrew and Abby, as well as four other rooms. According to the B&B's official website, as of March, 2006, on-season room rates (May-Oct) are, individually, $250/night for Andrew's, Abby's, or Emma's rooms and $225/night for Lizzie's room, or the rooms can be combined into the aforementioned two-room suites for $400/night each suite. The remaining four rooms are $175/night. The house's history is clearly good for business, as the rooms are often booked months in advance. The house is also open for daily tours.
Ongoing work has restored the home to a close approximation of its condition when the murders occurred. This has recently included the destruction of a print shop which had been attached to the house's south and east sides for most of the 20th century. "Maplecroft," the mansion Lizzie bought after her acquittal, on French Street in the fashionable Highlands sections of town (once known as "The Hill") is privately owned, and only occasionally available for touring, after a brief, unsuccessful stint as as a bed and breakfast destination itself.
Artistic depictions
A number of books expounding different theories have been written about the crime. These include:
- Brown, Arnold R. Lizzie Borden: The Legend, the Truth, the Final Chapter. Nashville, TN: Rutledge Hill Press, 1991. ISBN 1558530991
- de Mille, Agnes. Lizzie Borden: A Dance of Death. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1968.
- Kent, David Forty Whacks: New Evidence in the Life and Legend of Lizzie Borden. Yankee Books, 1992. ISBN 0899093515
- Kent, David The Lizzie Borden Sourcebook. Boston: Branden Publishing Company, 1992. ISBN 0828319502
- King, Florence. WASP, Where is Thy Sting? Chapter 15, "One WASP's Family, or the Ties That Bind." Stein & Day, 1977. ISBN 0552993778 (1990 Reprint Edition)
- Lincoln, Victoria. A Private Disgrace: Lizzie Borden by Daylight. NY: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1967. ISBN 0930330358
- Masterton, William L. Lizzie Didn’t Do It! Boston: Branden Publishing Company, 2000. ISBN 0828320527
- Spiering, Frank. Lizzie: The Story of Lizzie Borden. Dorset Press, 1991. ISBN 0880296852
- Sullivan, Robert. Goodbye Lizzie Borden. Brattleboro, VT: Stephen Greene Press, 1974. ISBN 0140114165
There is a scholarly journal published on Lizzie Borden, Fall River, and Victorian era America:
- The Hatchet: Journal of Lizzie Borden Studies. PearTree Press.
There is also a 1975 film adaptation of the crime:
She was the subject of the operas Lizzie Borden (1965) by Jack Beeson and Lizbeth by Thomas Albert.
Rick Geary used the device of a fictional journal written by a Fall River contemporary of Lizzie as the basis of his comic book "The Borden Tragedy: A Memoir of the Infamous Double Murder at Fall River, Massachusetts, 1892." NY: NBN Pub., 1997. It was an entry in his series "A Treasury of Victorian Murder."
Miss Borden also appears as a character in Monkeybone (2001), Joe Killionaire (2004), and Saturday the 14th Strikes Back (1988), played by Shawnee Free Jones, Alice Alyse, and Lauren Peterson, respectively; these depictions fall into the Victorian Evil category.
Borden was depicted on the episode "Treehouse of Horror IV" of The Simpsons (1993), as a member of the Devil's hand picked "Jury of the Damned". The Jury was convened to render a verdict on the Devil's claim over Homer Simpson's soul. Also, the episode Cape Feare (aired in the same year) briefly featured the character Martin Prince dressed as Borden for a school play and saying, "Forty whacks with the wet noodle, Bart."
Lizzie Borden was also the topic of a song by the group The Chad Mitchell Trio, named aptly "Lizzie Borden/You Can't Chop Your Poppa Up in Massachusetts." The song was written by Michael Brown for the popular Broadway revue, "New Faces of 1952."
She was also the subject of the cockney knees-up style song "Oh, Mother Borden" by late 80s UK musical satirists The Dubious Brothers.
The Disney Channel show "Smart Guy" alluded to the Lizzie Borden murders in an episode in which Yvette and a few friends pretend to be axe murderers, chant "Lizze Borden took an axe, gave her mother forty whacks, when she saw what she had done she gave her father forty-one," and chase Marcus and TJ around the house to teach them a lesson about manipulation and lying.
Angela Carter wrote a short story, entitled "The Fall River Axe Murders", on the events leading up to the murders.
Alexander Woollcott a critic and commentator for The New Yorker magazine, and a member of the Algonquin Round Table, was fascinated by Lizzie Borden and commented on her during his radio broadcasts in the 1930s. Wollcott was the inspiration for Sheridan Whiteside, the main character in the play The Man Who Came to Dinner by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, and Woollcott's interest in the Borden murders is parodied in the play.
Adoptions of the name
Because of the fame and infamy, several women have later adopted the name "Lizzie" or "Lizzy Borden"; see Lizzy Borden for a list.