The Fall River Tragedy: A History of the Borden Murders

by Edwin H. Porter

I need not give them in detail. You know enough in your own households; you know all about it. You are men and human. You have your feelings about it. I am not going to drag them up, but you must not lose sight of these things. Then there was some talk about a roll of burned paper in the stove, where Mr. Philip Harrington, I believe, was the officer. He took off the cover and saw what he said looked like the embers of a rolled up piece of paper, burned, that is all. And there was some sort of dark insinuations here floating around that didn’t clothe themselves in words, but there was something in the manner that meanly intimated that Dr. Bowen was doing something about it—Dr. Bowen—I suppose they don’t make any allegation that he committed these murders, or helped to cover up, or assisted in doing anything about it. When the evidence is heard, it seems that Mr. Philip Harrington says that Dr. Bowen was throwing in some pieces of an old letter that had nothing to do with these transactions, something about his own family matters of no account. And Mr. Harrington, I think I am right in the name of the officer, when they were thrown in, saw some little piece of paper, rolled up paper, about an inch in diameter, that had been rolled up and was lying there, the embers of it, and there was a small, low fire. Well, we thought the handle was in there. We thought that was the plan that the government possessed itself with the idea that that handle was rolled up by the defendant in a piece of paper and put down in there to burn; and it had all burned up except the envelope of paper. Did you ever see such a funny fire in the world? What a funny fire that was. A hard stick inside a newspaper and the hardwood stick would go out beyond recall, and the newspaper that lives forever would stay there. What a funny idea; what a theory that is. And we wrestled with that proposition here, on the part of the defense, through weary nights, troubled about it, until Fleet and Mullaly got here together, and then we were relieved from every doubt. For the handle is in it, and it is out of it. Fleet did not see it; Mullaly did see it. Fleet did not take it out of the box, and Mullaly saw him do it. And it is in the box now, and they run over to Fall River to get it, or they wanted to, and can’t get into our house, and explain about it. So we rather think that the handle is still flying in the air, a poor orphan handle without a hatchet, flying around somewhere. For heaven’s sake get the one hundred and twenty-five policemen of Fall River and chase it till they can drive it in somewhere and hitch it up to its family belongings. Then, too, upon the best testimony of the experts, and probably in your

own common sense, whoever committed that murder of Mrs. Borden stood astride her body. She was a large, stout, fleshy woman, weighing two hundred pounds. Conceive of the situation. You looked at the place. You saw the little gap between the bureau and the bed, stated to be about thirty to thirty-four inches, and you are to conceive of the murderer standing over the body in this way. Here she lies, there, and the murderer standing over her and literally chopping her head to pieces. I shall have more to say about that by and by, but I call it to your attention. And they all agreed that Mr. Borden was butchered by somebody who stood at the head of the sofa and between that and the parlor door. You know how it is placed and we make no question about it. That looks reasonable, we will say, and so we take the things as they are. Now, what reason is there for saying that this defendant is guilty? The commonwealth asks you to come up here and hear all this evidence and point out whether you think she is guilty or not. If you do not think she is, why, you say, “Not guilty;” and the commonwealth is satisfied, and the district attorney goes away, having done his whole duty, satisfied to let it alone. He does not find any fault about it, he is relieved of it. It is a great relief to him to get rid of the case. He does not enjoy it. He says, come up and hear all we have got against her and let the jury say she is not guilty and that will stop this matter, or if you come up and hear it and you say she is guilty, then that relieves me about it. I put this responsibility on you. And the court says, “I put this woman into your charge.” Now you have got it all. Now what right have they to say anything about it? Well, I want to run it through, which I have done with some care, and tell you why they claim that she did it.

In the first place, they say she was in the house in the forenoon. Well, that may look to you like a very wrong place for her to be in. But it is her home. I suspect you have kind of an impression that it would be a little better for her than it would be out traveling the streets. I don’t know where I would want my daughter to be, at home ordinarily, or where it would speak more for her honor and care, and reflect somewhat of credit upon me and her mother (who is my wife, I want to say), than to say that she was at home, attending to the ordinary vocations of life, as a dutiful member of the household, as belonging there. So I don’t think there is any criminal look about that. She was at home. She is shown to have been upstairs to her room, the government says, about ten minutes before ten, and she must have seen, as they claim, the dead body of Mrs. Borden,

as she, the defendant, went up and down the stairs. Now, let us look at that, because that is an important feature in the case, important for the commonwealth, important for the defendant. You went there and saw the situation. You know how the stairs go up, turning around as you go up, and at the top of the landing you are right there at Miss Lizzie’s door. When you stand at the top of the landing you cannot see into the guest chamber, you know. It is as if you stood over there where the officer stands, or a little further. You are not looking into the door at all. It is not like a good many houses where you come up at the top and are looking in at both doors at the same time. Then it is said that at a certain point on the staircase, right on one tread of one stair, if you look in under the bed across the floor of the guest chamber you could see any object that was over between the bed and bureau. And you were all asked to do that by traveling up and traveling down—you remember the experience you had—and looking. And therefore they say that, although Miss Lizzie, when she was at her door as she undertook to pass down, could not see Mrs. Borden over there behind the bed, that if she went downstairs she could have seen Mrs. Borden lying there behind the bed, and, therefore, that she must have seen her. Now if we had marched up and down the stairs and told you nothing of what we wanted you to look at, there is not one of you that would have squinted under that bed on that particular tread of the stairs. You would not have thought of it. But you were going to see if you could see, and you were told to look all you could, and see if you could see. So you got ready to see, and made up your minds that you were going to see if there was anything to see. You have not been home for the last two weeks. But when you get home, and after you get over this in two or three weeks from now, and I meet you, I want you to tell me where you looked when you came down stairs that morning, and whether you looked to see what you could see at any particular stair. How was it the last day you were at home? Do you remember anything about it? What time in the morning did you come down? At what stair did you look to see what you could see? Right in your own house where nothing had happened. Now we are talking of a time with regard to Miss Lizzie when nothing had happened, when everything was all right. It was so at that time as to her. Now people do not go searching and squinting and playing the detective and all that to begin with. I do not. If I did I should think I was a rascal some way or other, and that something was happening to me. If she did that thing, if she was looking to see if

anybody could see it, if she walked down and looked under and not said anything about it—there goes the murderess, see her; she didn’t see it, and she might. Therefore she is the criminal. She did see it because she could, and, therefore, she is the criminal. No, no. You and I, until we get to be too old, run up and down stairs just as we have a mind to. They are our stairs. We do not ask anybody’s pardon or qualify our act a particle. Then there is not the slightest evidence that that door was open at that time. Remember that there is evidence that it was open later but no evidence that it was open before Mr. Borden came in. I am right about that, and that is very important. So that if, when Miss Lizzie was down stairs and went upstairs, as she undoubtedly did during that forenoon, to her room, if she went up and down stairs and the door was closed or nearly closed or stood ajar, then, of course, she could not see. She had no occasion to go into that spare room. Wouldn’t go in there. As you know about the habits of the family in which she lived, the spare room was closed up practically. Mrs. Borden had gone there to make the beds, and after she had left it all right, undoubtedly she would push to the door. The door was pushed to, at any rate. There is no evidence that it was wide open. Now the government starts out with the idea that the door was standing wide open, and, therefore, that she could see: and I have told you how you can reason it very plainly out in your own common experience you wouldn’t look. If she had been lying right in front of the bed, outside, why I should have said it would be very improbable that a passer up and down the stairs would not have seen her, and yet that is not impossible. You walk along the streets sometimes, possibly—I do not want to say anything wrong about you—and you meet your own wife and don’t see her, go right along. They used to tell a story about Prof. Peirce over at Cambridge who didn’t know his own wife when he met her, and he had been spoken to about it so much that finally he thought to make amends, he would speak to the first thing he met, and that was a cow. He said “Good morning.” He didn’t make any more mistakes. People are not looking for everything at every minute, especially if they are innocent. It is the guilty man that is always looking around to see when there is somebody round going to catch him, lay hand on him. Now do not ask her to do things that nobody else does. Besides, you remember the testimony from Dr. Bowen and Mr. Manning and some others—it is not necessary to state them—that the upper hall was dark when they went up there, and that the guest chamber was dark. You

remember that in that guest chamber there are these tight board shutters that shut up. And you know the New England housewife does not like to have her carpet fade, and the more they live in the old style the more careful they are.

I remember with some reflections about my old mother, how she looked after the carpet and the boys, and they did not get the light in. The boys wanted to live out in the sunlight, and she did not want her carpets there. And so the natural thing in that room in the Borden house was to keep the shutters shut, those tight shutters. And the doctors say, they all of them say, that when they went in it was dark and they had to open them so they could see something. Now you recollect that we tried that on you over there. You marched up and down in the first place, with the shutters all flung open, so that that room was as light as this, or more so. Then we shut the shutters and asked you to go up. You know the instance. You can see across the street, but it is always difficult to look down into a well and see what is at the bottom. Now, they say further, as a reason, that she is guilty, or they claim it, that Mr. Fleet tells you that Lizzie said she saw Mrs. Borden about 9 o’clock, when she, meaning Mrs. Borden, was making the bed. Now, taking that as true, there is no contradiction of it, I am bound to say, however, in fairness to the defendant, that it is possible that Mr. Fleet was mistaken. But it is of no great account, as the defense looks at this case. Admit that, then, for the time being, for this discussion, to be true, I do not say it is, but just assume it. See what it comes to, then: that is, Miss Lizzie said to Mr. Fleet—assume that it is a fact—that as she went down stairs or went upstairs she saw Mrs. Borden making the bed in the spare room. Well, what of it? what of it? True, you say. Your daughter goes upstairs this morning to her room and she sees her mother in the spare room making the bed. Well, what of it? Well, they say she was upstairs when Mrs. Borden was making the bed. That is true. But she was upstairs in her own house, in her own room, at a time when the orderly woman of a house goes to look after the morning work. It does not appear one way or the other whether they were in conversation or not, and it does not appear whether she went up and down stairs that morning two or three or more times or not. Why, you would naturally infer, I should say, that it would be the commonest thing in the world for this young woman to pass up and down stairs to her room in the ordinary way of living? Why not? Do you suppose that your wives and daughters can tell the number of times they went up and down

stairs six months ago on a given day? Not at all, or even the day before, unless they were very careful about something. Now, there is no doubt at all in my mind that she did go up and down stairs. Mrs. Borden was making the bed. That was before she had been killed, of course. And while she was there, pursuing that work, nothing whatever except the passing up and down is what is claimed here. Now, grant it all. Grant that she did go up and down stairs that morning about 9 o’clock. Mrs. Borden was alive. It is not claimed that she killed them at that time. But the commonwealth undertakes to tell you without any evidence, gentlemen, without any evidence that she stayed up there that forenoon, practically, until her father came in. I say there is no evidence of it, and I will show you that later. That she went up and down I do not care to question. I should expect it. That she stayed up, no; or that she was there, having stayed all the time until her father came, no. Now, she told about the note, they say, and that is evidence of guilt. She told about Mrs. Borden having a note. Now, there is considerable interest in that question, and I ask your attention to it. You know that after the tragedies, when Miss Lizzie was asked about where Mrs. Borden was, she told Bridget, so Bridget tells us, that Mrs. Borden had a note and had gone out. I said: “Who is sick?” “I don’t know; she had a note this morning; it must be in town.” Now, that is what Bridget said to Mrs. Churchill and she says: “I said,” meaning herself, “I said, ‘where is your mother?’ She said, ‘I don’t know: she’s just had a note to see some one who is sick.’” Next question: listen to it. “What did Bridget tell about Mrs. Borden having a note?” and, “She said Mrs. Borden had a note to go and see some one that was sick, and she was dusting the sitting room, and she hurried off and said she didn’t tell me where she was going: she generally does.” Now, that is what Bridget told Mrs. Churchill. You get the idea. Both Bridget and Lizzie had learned from Mrs. Borden that she had had a note. Mrs. Borden had told Lizzie. Mrs. Borden had told Bridget. She had given Bridget the work to do, washing the windows. She says to her: “I have got a note to go out and see some one that was sick.” That was when she was dusting in the sitting room. That is when Bridget says it was to Mrs. Churchill: that was at the first, when there was no mistake about it. And Bridget says: “She didn’t tell me. She hurried off.” No, Lizzie didn’t say anything about her hurrying off; nobody says that. Bridget told it to Mrs. Churchill. She hurried off, and “She, Mrs. Borden, didn’t tell me, Bridget,

where she was going; she generally does.” Now have you the slightest doubt about that Mrs. Churchill you saw? She was called upon three times to tell that and she told it very clearly and I think convincingly. Now notice the questioning that follows: “That was what Bridget told you?” “Yes, sir.” “That was not what Lizzie told you?” “No, sir.” “Bridget said Mrs. Borden had a note?” “Yes.” “And she hurried off?” “Yes, sir.” “She was dusting the sitting room?” “Yes, sir.” “And Bridget says, ‘she didn’t tell me where she was going; she generally does,’ Bridget says.” “Bridget said that?” “Yes, sir.” “That was not what Lizzie said?” “No, sir.” “Now, you have got that right, haven’t you; no doubt about that?” “Bridget said that Mrs. Borden had a note to go and see some one who was sick. ‘She was dusting in the sitting room; she hurried off. She didn’t tell me where she was going: she generally does.’” Now, my friend who opened this case for the commonwealth said that Lizzie told a lie about that note. He used that word. I submit that that will hardly stand upon his evidence. If he had heard the evidence fully through he would not have uttered that expression, because here you have proved that Bridget gave the clearest and fullest statement about this matter, and you will probably infer from this that Lizzie learned from Bridget that Mrs. Borden had gone out, and she had a note to go because Bridget tells it with exact detail and holds it down herself. That is not criminal on the part of Bridget at all. I am only calling your attention to the directness of the testimony at the time, right on

the very moment. Now, there is not anything in the testimony that really qualifies that at all. Miss Russell says that she heard the talk about the note, but she did not know who told it. Now notice that, and Bridget was there, Lizzie there, Mrs. Churchill there, and Miss Russell says she heard the talk about the note, but she does not know who told it, so that you see that you are uncertain there. Then Miss Russell tells about the conversation with Dr. Bowen, and with Lizzie about the note. Listen to it: “Lizzie, do you know anything about the note your mother had?” And she hesitated and said, well, no, she didn’t. Said Dr. Bowen, “I had looked in the waste basket,” and Miss Russell said “have you looked in your pocket?” and I think I said, “Well, then, she must have put it in the fire.” And Lizzie said, “Yes, she must have put it in the fire.” You see that the suggestion of putting it in the fire came from Miss Russell, not from Lizzie. Dr. Bowen had been searching the waste basket. He had looked around to see if he could find the note. He did not succeed, he calls their attention to it in this way I have stated, and they all assent to it and very likely that was true. It was not of any account. The woman had got the note and had tossed it away, very likely threw it in the kitchen stove and burned it, but we do not know anything about it. But they all seemed satisfied right there on the spot.