August 4, 1892: Andrew Jackson Borden and his wife, Abby, are brutally murdered in their house in Fall River, Massachusetts. They were 70 and 64 years old, respectively. Lizzie Borden, Andrew's daughter and Abby's stepdaughter, would be arrested and charged with the murders.
Lizzie Andrew Borden (that was the name she was born with, not "Elizabeth") was born on July 17, 1860 in Fall River, a mill city about 50 miles south of Boston, and 13 miles east of the Rhode Island State Line. She had an older sister, Emma. Their mother, Sarah, died in 1863. Three years later, their father married Abby Durfee Gray.
The girls didn't like her, and, instead of "Mother" or a derivative thereof, called her "Mrs. Borden." They thought she married Andrew for his money. He backed that suspicion up by giving gifts of real estate to his new wife's family, further reducing the sisters' chances of receiving any inheritance.
Andrew was wealthy, having made his fortune in, with some foreshadowing, the building of caskets. He invested that money in real estate, and got even richer. But he was also was known for his frugality. For instance, at a time when indoor plumbing had already become common for wealthy people, he never had it installed in the Borden home. That house was in an affluent area, but the wealthiest residents of Fall River, including Andrew's cousins, generally lived in the more fashionable neighborhood, "The Hill," which was farther from the industrial areas of the city.
Lizzie and Emma were in their early 30s and still never married, which was unusual for American women of the time. So they had to go to work, and both had jobs teaching Sunday school at their church. In May 1892, Lizzie had built a roost for pigeons on the house's property, but her father killed the pigeons with a hatchet, upsetting the sisters. In July, they both moved out, to nearby New Bedford, Massachusetts. Later that month, Lizzie returned to Fall River, but to a rooming house instead of her father's house.
John Morse, the brother of Andrew's 1st wife, arrived in the evening of August 3, and slept in the guest room. After breakfast the next morning, at which Andrew, Abby, Lizzie, John, and the Bordens' maid Bridget "Maggie" Sullivan, were present, Andrew and John went to the sitting room, where they chatted for nearly an hour. Morse left around 8:48 AM, to buy a pair of oxen, and visit his niece in Fall River, planning to return to the Borden home for lunch at noon. Andrew left for his usual morning walk sometime after 9:00
Although the cleaning of the guest room was one of Lizzie and Emma's regular chores, Abby went upstairs sometime between 9:00 and 10:30 to make the bed. According to the forensic investigation, Abby was facing her killer at the time of the attack. She was first struck on the side of the head with a hatchet, which cut her just above the ear, causing her to turn and fall face down on the floor. The killer delivered 17 more direct hits to the back of her head, killing her.
When Andrew returned at around 10:30, his key failed to open the door, so he knocked. Maggie went to unlock the door, found it jammed, and, according to her own testimony, "uttered a curse." She would later testify that she heard Lizzie, from the top of the stairs, laughing immediately after this.
This was considered significant, as Abby was already dead by this time, and her body would have been visible to anyone on the home's second floor. Lizzie later denied being upstairs, and testified that her father had asked her where Abby was, to which she replied that a messenger had delivered Abby a summons to visit a sick friend.
Maggie stated that she had then removed Andrew's boots and helped him into his slippers, before he lay down on the sofa for a nap -- a detail contradicted by the crime-scene photos, which show Andrew wearing boots. (In their 1961 satire song "Lizzie Borden," The Chad Mitchell Trio incorrectly sang, "We hope he went to Heaven, 'cause he wasn't wearing shoes.") Maggie then informed Lizzie of a department store sale. Lizzie said Sullivan was welcome to come along with her, but Sullivan felt unwell, and went to take a nap in her bedroom instead.
Maggie testified that she was in her 3rd-floor room, resting from cleaning windows, when, just before 11:10 AM, she heard Lizzie call from downstairs, "Maggie, come quick! Father's dead! Somebody came in and killed him!"
Andrew was slumped on a couch in the downstairs sitting room, struck 10 or 11 times with a hatchet-like weapon. One of his eyes had been split cleanly in two, suggesting that he had been asleep when attacked. His still-bleeding wounds suggested a very recent attack. Dr. Bowen, the family's physician, arrived from his home across the street, and pronounced both victims dead. Detectives estimated that Andrew's death had occurred at approximately 11:00.
Most of the officers who interviewed Lizzie said that they disliked her attitude, some saying she was too calm and poised for someone whose father had just been murdered. In the basement, they found two hatchets, two axes, and a hatchet-head with a broken handle. The hatchet-head was suspected of being the murder weapon, as the break in the handle appeared fresh, and the ash and dust on the head, unlike that on the other bladed tools, appeared to have been deliberately applied to make it look as if it had been in the basement for some time.
Lizzie had been prescribed regular doses of morphine to calm her nerves, and it is possible that her testimony at the inquest on August 8 was affected by this. Her behavior was erratic, and she often refused to answer a question even if the answer would be beneficial to her. She often contradicted herself, and provided alternating accounts of the morning in question. She was arrested on August 11, and indicted on December 2.
The trial was held at the Bristol County Courthouse in New Bedford, starting on June 5, 1893. The defense managed to cast doubt that the hatchet-head with the broken handle was the murder weapon, meaning the prosecution had no murder weapon. No bloody clothes, other than those of the victims, were found in the house, and no blood was found on Lizzie, meaning the prosecution had no forensic evidence. And the prosecution had no witnesses to the killings.
No murder weapon, no forensic evidence, and no witnesses. Therefore, there was not just reasonable doubt as to Lizzie's guilt, but considerable doubt. On June 20, the jury took just an hour and a half to deliberate, and acquitted her.
There were other suspects, including maid Maggie Sullivan, and uncle John Morse, but the police never seriously investigated anyone else. They simply presumed that Lizzie did it, and that the jury let her get away with it, and, having failed to convince a jury, let the matter drop. Officially, the case remains unsolved.
Since neither was convicted, and Emma was never even suspected at the time, Lizzie and Emma inherited their father's estate. But Fall River society presumed Lizzie guilty, and ostracized her. In 1905, the sisters had a falling-out. Emma moved out, and they never saw each other again.
Neither sister ever married or had children, so there are no Borden descendants. One theory about the murder is that Abby had caught Lizzie and Maggie the maid in a lesbian act, and Lizzie killed Abby to keep her from telling anyone, and then told her father, and killed him after his reaction. While this theory is plausible, given the social climate of the time -- the parents were likely to be angrier at Lizzie for fornicating with someone below her station than with someone of her own gender -- there is no evidence for it.
Lizzie Borden died on June 1, 1927, in Fall River, of pneumonia. She was 66. Emma, ill with kidney disease, died just 9 days later, at 76, in a nursing home in Newmarket, New Hampshire. The sisters were buried next to each other in the family plot. Lizzie left some money to cousins and friends, and $30,000 to the Fall River Animal Rescue League.
Lizzie was played by Carmen Matthews on a 1956 episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, which suggested that sister Emma committed the murders; Elizabeth Montgomery -- star of the sitcom Bewitched and, after the film aired, discovered to be a distant cousin of Lizzie -- on the 1975 ABC TV-movie The Legend of Lizzie Borden, which showed Lizzie guilty; Christina Ricci in the 2014 Lifetime TV-movie Lizzie Borden Took an Ax, which showed her guilty; and Chloë Sevigny in the 2018 film Lizzie, which accepts the motive of the lesbian cover-up with Maggie, played by Kristen Stewart.
Modern forensic science could probably have properly identified the killer. Whether it was Lizzie or someone else may never be known. Today, most people know Lizzie from a jump-rope rhyme, which gets the facts wrong (Abby was her stepmother, not her mother, and the numbers of "whacks" were well overstated):
Lizzie Borden took an axe
and gave her mother forty whacks.
When she saw what she had done,
she gave her father forty-one.
and gave her mother forty whacks.
When she saw what she had done,
she gave her father forty-one.
In 1961, the folksinging group The Chad Mitchell Trio did their own "Lizzie Borden" rhyme:
You can't chop your Papa up in Massachusetts.Not even if it's planned as a surprise.
No, you can't chop your Papa up in Massachusetts.You know how neighbors love to criticize.
Today, the site of the murders is "The Lizzie Borden House, A Bed and Breakfast & Museum." No, I'm not joking. It is decorated in 1890s style. The hatchet-head, the alleged murder weapon, is preserved at the Fall River Historical Society.
*
August 4, 1892 was a Thursday. Baseball's National League was the only major sports league in North America at the time, and these games were played:
* The New York Giants beat the Washington Senators, 5-1 at the Polo Grounds. This ballpark would burn down in 1911, and be replaced by the more familiar Polo Grounds.
* The Brooklyn Bridgegrooms -- the proto-Dodgers were so named because 6 players got married in the 1887-88 off-season -- beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 5-4 at Eastern Park in Brooklyn.
* The Boston Beaneaters (later the Braves) beat the Baltimore Orioles, 6-4 at the South End Grounds in Boston.
* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 12-5 at League Park in Cincinnati. Crosley Field would be built on the site.
* The Cleveland Spiders beat the Louisville Colonels, 4-2 at Eclipse Park in Louisville
* And the St. Louis Browns (later the Cardinals) would beat their arch-rivals, the Chicago Colts (later the Cubs), 6-1 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. This park would be torn down and replaced by the more familiar Sportsman's Park, a.k.a. the 1st Busch Stadium, in 1909.
The Orioles, the Spiders, the Reds, and the Senators would be dropped from the NL after the 1899 season.
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