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Lizzie LbNA #23584

Owner:CPAScott
Plant date:Jul 8, 2006
Location:
City:Fall River
County:Bristol
State:Massachusetts
Boxes:1
Found by: Alphagirl21
Last found:Mar 12, 2022
Status:FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
Last edited:Jul 8, 2006
Stamp carved by Pointer Party
"Lizzie Borden took an axe
And gave her mother forty whacks
And when she saw what she had done
She gave her father forty-one."

On August 4, 1892, Andrew Jackson Borden and his wife, Abby Durfee Borden, were gruesomely murdered in their home at 92 Second Street in Fall River, MA. Each had been struck multiple times in the head by a blunt object, likely a hatchet. Although initial suspicions came upon a few individuals, ultimately the police charged Lizzie Borden, the daughter of and step-daughter of Andrew and Abby, respectively.

The Borden murders and the subsequent arrest and trial of their daughter is one of the most famous such events in American history and was widely publicized and discussed at the time. This is partly because of the heinousness of the crime but perhaps more so of the case's principal suspect. Although Lizzie and her step-mother did not get along and frequently feuded, could this demure Sunday School teacher have really committed such an unspeakable act?

Andrew Jackson Borden was one of the leading citizens of Fall River, Massachusetts, a prosperous mill town and seaport. The Borden family had strong roots to the community and had been among the most influential citizens of the region for decades. At the age of 70, Borden was certainly one of the richest men in the city. He was a director on the board of several banks and a commercial landlord with considerable holdings. He was a tall, thin and dour man and while he was known for this thrift and admired for his business abilities, he was not well-known for his humor nor was he particularly likable.

Borden lived with his second wife, Abby Durfee Gray and his daughters from his first marriage, Emma and Lizzie, in a two-and-a-half story frame house. It was located in an unfashionable part of town, but was close to his business interests. Both daughters felt the house was beneath their station in life and begged their father to move to a nicer place. Borden’s frugal nature never even allowed him to consider this. In spite of this, and his conservative daily life, Borden was said to be moderately generous with both of his daughters.

On the morning of Tuesday, August 4, 1892, the Borden household awoke early. Emma, Lizzie's sister, was not at home, having gone to visit friends in the nearby town of Fairhaven, but the girl’s Uncle John (Morse) had arrived the day before for an unannounced visit. Also at home was Bridget Sullivan, the maid. Bridget was a respectable Irish girl who Emma and Lizzie both rudely insisted on calling "Maggie", the name of a previous servant. At the time of the murders, Bridget was 26 years old and had been in the Borden household since 1889. There is nothing to say that she was anything but an exemplary young woman, who had come to America from Ireland in 1886. She did not stay in the house during the night following the murders, but did come back on Friday night to her third-floor room. On Saturday, she left the house, never to return.

Bridget came downstairs from her attic room around 6:00 to build a fire in the kitchen and begin cooking breakfast. An hour later, Mr. Morse and Mr. and Mrs. Borden came down to eat and they lingered in conversation around the table for nearly an hour. Lizzie slept late and did not join them for the meal.

At a little before eight, Morse left the house to go and visit a niece and nephew and Borden locked the screen door after him. It was a peculiar custom in the house to always keep doors locked. Even the doors between certain rooms upstairs were usually locked. A few minutes after Morse left, Lizzie came downstairs but said that she wasn’t hungry. She had coffee and a cookie but nothing else.

At quarter past nine, Andrew Borden left the house and went downtown. Abby Borden went upstairs to make the bed in the guestroom that Morse was staying in. She asked Bridget to wash the windows. At 9:30, she came downstairs for a few moments and then went back up again, commenting that she needed fresh pillowcases. Bridget went about her daily chores and started on the window washing, retrieving pails and water from the barn. She also paused for a few minutes to chat over the fence with the hired girl next door. She finished the outside of the windows at about 10:30 and then started inside.

Fifteen minutes later, Mr. Borden returned home. Bridget let him in and Lizzie came downstairs. She told her father that "Mrs. Borden has gone out - she had a note from someone who was sick." Lizzie and Emma always called their step-mother "Mrs. Borden" and recently, the relationship between them, especially with Lizzie, was strained.

Borden took the key to his bedroom off a shelf and went up the back stairs. The room could only be reached by these stairs, as there was no hallway, and the front stairs only gave access to Lizzie’s room (from which Emma’s could be reached) and the guest room. There were connecting doors between the elder Borden’s rooms and Lizzie’s room, but they were usually kept locked.

Borden stayed upstairs for only a few minutes before coming back down and settling onto the sofa in the sitting room.

Shortly before 11:00 am, Bridget retired to her room on the third-floor to take a nap. She was awoken by Lizzie shouts. "Maggie, Come down! Come down quick!" Lizzie wailed, "Father's dead! Somebody's come in and killed him!"

Lizzie sent Bridget to fetch the local doctor, Dr. Seabury W. Bowen, a family friend who lived across the street from the Bordens. The doctor was not in, but Ms. Bowen, upon hearing the news, rushed over to the Borden house. "Where were you when this thing happened?" she asked Lizzie. ""I was out in the yard, and I heard a groan and came in. The screen door was wide open." Lizzie replied.

By now, the neighbors were starting to gather on the lawn and someone had called for the police. Mrs. Adelaide Churchill, the next door neighbor, came over to Lizzie, who was at the back entrance to the house and asked if anything was wrong. Lizzie responded by saying, "Oh, Mrs. Churchill, someone has killed Father!"

"Where is your father?" she asked. "In the sitting room," replied Lizzie.

"Where is your mother?" Mrs. Churchill asked. Lizzie said that she didn’t know and that Abby Borden, her stepmother, had received a note asking her to respond to someone who was sick. She also added "but I don’t know but that she is killed too, for I thought I heard her come in... Father must have an enemy, for we have all been sick, and we think the milk has been poisoned."

By this time, Dr. Bowen had arrived at the house. He examined the body and asked for a sheet to cover it. Borden had been attacked with a sharp object, probably an ax, and so much damage had been done to his head and face that Bowen, a close friend, could not at first positively identify him.

Several minutes passed before anyone thought of going upstairs to see if Abby Borden had come home. "Maggie, I am almost positive I heard her coming in," Lizzie spoke. "Go upstairs and see." Bridget refused to go upstairs by herself, so Mrs. Churchill went with her. They went up the staircase together but Mrs. Churchill was the first to see Abby lying on the floor of the guestroom. She viewed the obviously dead body and rushed downstairs. "Is there another?" a neighbor asked her. "Yes," she replied. "She is up there."

The murder investigation that followed was chaotic. The police were reluctant to suspect Lizzie of the murder as it was against the perceived social understanding of the era that a woman such as she was could have possibly committed such a heinous crime. Other solutions were advanced but were discarded as even more impossible.

A profusion of clues were discovered over the next few days, all of which went nowhere. A boy reported seeing a man jump over the back fence of the Borden property and while a man was found matching the boy’s description, he had an unbreakable alibi. A bloody hatchet was found on the Sylvia Farm in South Somerset but it proved to be covered in chicken blood. While Bridget was also seen as a suspect for a short time, the investigation finally began to center on Lizzie. A circumstantial case began to be developed against her with no incriminating physical evidence, like bloody clothes, a real motive for the killings, or even a convincing demonstration of how and when she committed the murders.

Over the course of several weeks though, investigators managed to compile a sequence of events that certainly cast suspicion on the spinster Sunday School teacher.

On Sunday, August 7, Alice Russell, one of Lizzie's friends, observed Lizzie burning a dress in the kitchen stove. She told her friend that, "If I were you, I wouldn't let anybody see me do that, Lizzie." Lizzie said it was a dress stained with paint, and was of no use.

It was this testimony at the inquest that prompted Judge Blaisdell of the Second District Court to charge Lizzie with the murders. The inquest itself was kept secret but at its conclusion, Lizzie was charged with the murder of her father and was taken into custody. The only testimony that Lizzie ever gave during all of the legal proceedings was at the inquest and we will never know for sure what she said. She was arraigned the following day and replied that she was "not guilty" of the charge. She was then taken to the Taunton Jail, which had facilities for female prisoners.

The trial itself lasted fourteen days and news of it filled the front pages of every major newspaper in the country. Between 30 and 40 reporters from the Boston and New York papers and the wire services were in the courtroom every day. The trial began on June 5.

Crucial to the prosecution in the case was evidence that supplied a motive for Lizzie to commit the murders. This was done by using a number of witnesses who testified to Lizzie’s dislike of her step-mother and her complaints about her father’s spendthrift ways. The prosecution also tried to establish that Borden was writing a new will that would leave Emma and Lizzie with a pittance and Abby with a huge portion of his half million dollar estate.

On Saturday, June 10, the prosecution attempted to enter Lizzie's testimony from the inquest into the record. The defense objected, since it was testimony from one who had not been formally charged. The jury was withdrawn so that the lawyers could argue it out and on Monday, when court resumed, the three-judge panel excluded Lizzie’s contradictory inquest testimony.

Lizzie Borden’s defense counsel used only two days to present its case. For the most part, the defense offered witnesses who could either corroborate Lizzie’s story, or who could provide alternate possibilities as to who the killer might be. The testimony of the various witnesses was meant to do little but provide "reasonable doubt" about Lizzie’s guilt.

On June 19 and 20, the attorneys presented their closing arguments. After, the judges then asked Lizzie if she had anything to say for herself and she spoke for the only time during the trial. "I am innocent", she said. "I leave it to my counsel to speak for me." Instructions were then given to the jury and they left to deliberate over the verdict.

A little over an hour later, the jury returned with its verdict. "Not Guilty".

Lizzie died on June 1, 1927, at age 67, after a long illness from complications following gall bladder surgery. Her sister, Emma died nine days later, as a result of a fall down the back stairs of her house. They were buried together in the family plot, along with a sister who had died in early childhood, their mother, their stepmother, and their headless father. Both Lizzie and Emma left their estates to charitable causes and Lizzie designated $500 for the perpetual care of her father’s grave.

The case of the Borden murders remains "unsolved" to this day.

--portions liberally borrowed from Lizzie Borden Took an Ax? History and Hauntings of One of the Most Puzzling Murder Cases in American History by Troy Taylor.


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This letterbox is located at the former Borden home at 92 Second Street in Fall River, MA. The house is currently operated as a Bed and Breakfast. The interior and exterior of the home has been restored to its original Victorian splendor, with careful attention to making it as close to the Borden home of August 1892 as is possible. The owners of the home invite all to view their collection of both Fall River and Borden memorabilia; tours are offered daily. For more information, see http://www.lizzie-borden.com/index.html.

Upon your arrival at the house, park in the small lot at the end of the driveway. In the front of the barn a short sidewalk leads to an central air conditioning unit. Between this and the barn an overturned terra cotta pot hides your prize. Please ensure that the pot base is replaced on "top" of the pot in order to cover the drainage hole and keep the letterbox dry. Also, please remember that this letterbox is on the grounds of a privately-owned home and operating business. Your respect of the house and its occupants and guests is expected and appreciated. Thanks are extended to the owners and operators of the house who have graciously given permission for the placement of this letterbox.

PLEASE re-hide the box well!