8LA_B2012-18 Student Handout
1860-1927
Variant Names: Lizzie Andrew Borden.
Born: July 19, 1860inFall River, Massachusetts, United States
Died: June 1, 1927inFall River, Massachusetts, United States
Occupation: alleged killer.
Biographical Essay:
American alleged murderess LizzieBorden (1860-1927) is claimed to have murdered her father and stepmother at the family's home in Fall River, Massachusetts, on August 4, 1892. The crime, gruesome and undoubtedly sensational, spawned a trial that became a landmark in the annals of American crime and in the development of the American mass media. Borden's possible involvement in the murders was one of the first celebrated cases investigated with the help of modern forensic methods, and the trial brought the idea of the expert witness to the forefront in American jurisprudence. The murders remain one of history's great unsolved mysteries; Borden was acquitted of the crime, and debate over who killed Andrew J. Borden and Abby Durfee Gray Borden generated a vein of publishing activity that has proven enduringly profitable.
Lizzie Andrew Borden (christened Lizzie, not Elizabeth), was born in Fall River, Massachusetts, on July 19, 1860, and lived in that city all her life. She was distantly related to the dairy-producing Borden family. Her mother, Sarah, died in 1862, whereupon her father, Andrew Borden, wed the never-married 38-year-old Abby Durfee Gray. Lizzie's older sister, Emma, did not accept her new stepmother, referring to her disrespectfully as Abby, and the tension soon transferred itself to Lizzie. There were other sources of tension in the household as well: though Andrew Borden was a wealthy man who had invested successfully in banks, cotton farms, and real estate, he was a miser who sold eggs from a basket to his business associates and refused to install running water in the family's Second Street home. Lizzie grew up with a slop pail and chamber pot in her bedroom—a fact that would prove significant in her eventual trial.
Neither Lizzie nor Emma Borden ever married. Lizzie graduated from a public high school in Fall River, and became involved with a variety of organizations consistent with the image expected of a young woman from a well-off family in a small New England city. She was a member in good standing of Central Congregational Church, where she taught Sunday school. Serving as secretary-treasurer of the Christian Endeavor Society, she was also active in the pro-Prohibition Women's Christian Temperance Union and in the antipoverty Fruit and Flower League. Both Lizzie and Emma lived at home, and in outward appearance Lizzie was an admirable and always composed young woman devoted to good works.
At home, though, the family dynamics steadily worsened. In 1887 Andrew Borden, who had wide real estate holdings, transferred ownership of a rental home he owned to Abby. The two daughters insisted that they should receive gifts of equal value. Andrew agreed, giving each daughter a $1,500 house, but the situation continued to fester. For Lizzie, everything given to Abby represented a diminution in her own inheritance, for the two sisters had never gotten along with their stepmother. Lizzie and Emma began to call Abby "Mrs. Borden" and to refuse to participate in family dinners—the household staff had to lay out two sets of place settings for each meal. In 1891 jewelry and cash disappeared from Andrew and Abby's master bedroom; the family went through the motions of a police investigation, although it was clear that Lizzie was the culprit.
After that, tensions began an increase toward the breaking point. "Everybody quietly bought lots of locks," noted Florence King in an article in the National Review. "To supplement the key locks, there were bolts, hooks, chains, and padlocks." Abby locked and bolted the door that ran between her bedroom and Lizzie's (the labyrinthine house, today a bed-and-breakfast, had few hallways). Lizzie did the same, and escalated the conflict by pushing a writing desk up against the door. Andrew in turn bought a massive lock, but left the key on the living room mantelpiece, in effect daring Lizzie to steal it. Yet a facade of harmony was maintained at all times. Bridget Sullivan, the family's new Irish maid, later testified at Lizzie's trial that she never heard raised voices in the Borden household.
Tried to Purchase Poison
The summer of 1892 was a hot one (although the temperature during LizzieBorden's fateful week has been a matter of dispute among researchers), and at the end of July both Borden sisters left Fall River: Emma went to Fairhaven, Massachusetts, while Lizzie went with some friends to a beach house on Buzzards Bay on the Massachusetts coast. While there, she tried to buy prussic acid (hydrogen cyanide) from a pharmacy, claiming that she wanted to use it to kill bugs that had infested a fur coat. Such behavior in midsummer attracted attention, and the druggist told her that the poison would be available only with a doctor's prescription.
Additional Possible Suspects
Back in Fall River, Lizzie got wind of another major property transfer on Andrew's part: this time a farm was being put in his wife's name, and John Morse, the brother of Andrew's first wife, was to be installed as caretaker. Lizzie told a friend named Alice Russell that her father's ruthless business ways had left him with many enemies, and that she had a feeling something terrible was about to happen to him. Several members of the household, including Lizzie, became ill on the evening of August 3, and Andrew raised the possibility that they had been poisoned. On August 4, Andrew, Abby, and John Morse sat down to a breakfast of mutton soup, sliced mutton, pancakes, bananas, pears, cookies, and coffee, after which Morse and Andrew Borden departed. Abby sent Bridget outside to wash windows in the summer heat.
The initial suspect was a Portuguese-born laborer who had wrangled with Andrew Borden over payment for a job and had visited the Borden home on the morning of the murders. Three days later, according to Russell's testimony before a grand jury in November, Lizzie burned a blue cotton dress in the kitchen stove, claiming she had ruined it by brushing up against some fresh paint. Police were skeptical of Lizzie's story, inasmuch as it would have required a killer other than Lizzie to remain inside the house or in the near vicinity for nearly two hours without being noticed, and a week later, after police remained unsatisfied with her answers to several questions at an inquest, she was arrested and charged with the double homicide. She awaited trial in jail for almost a year as police searched for a murder weapon and other evidence, and while prosecutors built a case against her.
Andrew returned home at about 10:40 a.m. for lunch. Shortly after that, Bridget, whom Lizzie called Maggie, was resting after her exertions with the windows. ""Maggie! Come down quick! Father's dead," she heard Lizzie cry out (according to her often-reproduced court testimony). "Somebody came in and killed him." Andrew had been hit, not 41 but 11 times with a heavy object, apparently an ax, and his head was mangled almost beyond recognition, with an eye and a tooth both split in two. Soon a neighbor made another gruesome discovery: the body of Abby was in an upstairs bedroom, in similar condition. Police summoned to the scene found no sign of forced entry. They concluded that Abby had been killed about an hour and a half before Andrew, a determination that has also been disputed. Questioned as to her whereabouts, Lizzie, who had no blood on her clothing or body, said that she had been in the barn behind the house, looking for lead weights to use as part of an upcoming fishing expedition.
Benefited from Well-Known Defender
The Borden murders were among America's first crimes to play out under the glare of the mass media. The case was covered extensively by New York's strenuously competing newspapers, and LizzieBorden granted interviews in which she tried to influence public opinion. To forestall the impression that she seemed emotionless in the face of her parents' deaths, she told the New York Recorder (as quoted by King), "They say I don't show any grief. Certainly I don't in public. I never did reveal my feelings and I cannot change my nature now." When her trial finally began, on June 5, 1893, Borden had a celebrity attorney in her corner: former Massachusetts governor George Robinson. One of the prosecutors, Frank Moody, was a future U.S. attorney general.
The case against Borden seemed strong, but it was entirely circumstantial. No witness could testify to direct knowledge of her involvement, and no murder weapon was ever definitively located. An ax head, found without its handle in the Borden home's basement, was linked by an expert witness, a Harvard University professor, who testified that it matched the wounds inflicted on Andrew and Abby. No blood was found on the blade.
The all-male jury began its deliberations on June 20, and after an hour and a half it returned with a verdict of not guilty. Newspapers of the time generally praised the verdict and the painstaking cross-examinations that led to it, but a preponderance of later evaluations has concluded that Borden was the murderess. The view is far from unanimous, however, with other studies advancing Morse as the culprit; or other townspeople; or an illegitimate son of Andrew Borden; or that perhaps Bridget Sullivan, angered at having to wash windows on the hottest day of the year, did the deed.
LizzieBorden, using the new name of Lizbeth, continued to live in Fall River after the trial's conclusion. She and Emma bought a substantial hilltop house they called Maplecroft; they were ostracized by many Fall River citizens, but opened their home to artists and traveling actors. Despite her newfound notoriety—and her neighbors’ whispers about her likely guilt—Lizzie remained in Fall River for the rest of her life. She and Emma inherited their father’s estate, gaining the financial freedom they had long craved. Lizzie bought a large house in one of the city’s most fashionable neighborhoods and spent her time traveling to Boston and New York to indulge in her love of theater. Just five years after the murder, Lizzie was briefly in the headlines again, when she was accused of—but not tried for—shoplifting. In 1905 the sisters became estranged. They rarely spoke in their later years but died within days of each other in June 1927. Both sisters were buried besides their murdered parents in the family plot in Oak Grove Cemetery.Lizzie lived alone at Maplecroftuntil her death from pneumonia on June 1, 1927. She left $30,000 in cash to the Animal Rescue League.
Source Citation:
"Borden, Lizzie (1860-1927)." Encyclopedia of World Biography.Vol. 28. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Discovering Collection. Gale. Gwinnett County Public Schools. 8 Sep. 2013 <