The Fall River Tragedy: A History of the Borden Murders

by Edwin H. Porter

Gentlemen, that is a tremendous fact. It is a controlling fact in this case. It is the key of the case. Why do I say that? Because the murderer of this man was the murderer of Mrs. Borden. It was the malice against Mrs. Borden that inspired the assassin. It was Mrs. Borden whose life that wicked person sought, and all the motive that we have to consider, all we have to say about this case, bears on her. It is a tremendous fact for another thing, a significant fact for another thing. We are driven to the alternative of finding that there was a human being who had the unparalleled audacity to penetrate that house when the entire family were in and about it, so far as he knew, to pursue his murderers with a deadly weapon in his hand, to the furthest corner of the house, and there to select an innocent and unoffending old lady for his first victim, and then lie in wait until the family should, all get together an hour and a half later that he might kill the other one.

This murderer was no fool: he was obedient to craft and cunning. He could not forsee that Bridget would go upstairs. He could not forsee that Lizzie would go to the barn. He might have known from the habits of Andrew Borden that he would come back, but it would be back to a house full of people—Morse might come at any time: he knew not when Emma might come. He was waiting for the family to assemble, this man who committed this deed. It was no sudden act of a man coming in and out. It was the act of a person who spent the forenoon in this domestic establishment, killing the woman at her early work and waiting till the man returned for his noon-day meal in order that he could be killed when everybody would be likely to be around him. It is a tremendous fact, Mr. Foreman. It appears in this case from the beginning to end. She had not an enemy in the world. You and I sometimes have our jars and discords. Andrew J. Borden had had his little petty quarrels with his tenants, nothing out of the ordinary, but Mrs. Abby Durfee Borden had not an enemy in all the world. There she lay bleeding, dead, prone by the hand of an assassin. Somebody went up there to kill her. In all this universe there could not be found a person who could have had any motive to do it.

We must now go into this establishment and see what manner of family this was. It is said that there is a skeleton in the household of every man, but the Borden skeleton—if there was one—was fairly well locked up from view. They were a close-mouthed family. They did not parade their difficulties. Last of all would you expect they would tell the domestic in the kitchen, which is the whole tower of strength of the defense, and yet, Mr. Foreman, there was a skeleton

in the closet of that house which was not adequate to this matter—O, no, not adequate to this thing. There is not anything in human nature that is adequate to this thing—remember that. But there was a skeleton of which we have seen the grinning eyeballs and the dangling limbs. It is useless to tell you that there was peace and harmony in that family. We know better. We know better. The remark that was made to Mrs. Gifford, the cloakmaker, was not a petulant outburst, such as might come and go. That correction of Mr. Fleet, at the very moment the poor woman who had reared that girl lay dead within ten feet of her voice, was not merely accidental. It went down deep into the springs of human nature. Lizzie Borden had never known her mother. She was not three years old when that woman passed away, and her youthful lips had scarcely learned to pronounce the tender word mamma, and no picture of her lay in the girl’s mind. And yet she had a mother—she had a mother. Before she was old enough to go to school, before she arrived at the age of five years, this woman, the choice of her father, the companion of her father, who had lost and mourned and loved again, had come in and had done her duty by that girl and had reared her, had stood in all the attitudes which characterize the tenderest of all human relations. Through all her childhood’s sicknesses that woman had cared for her. When she came in weary with her sports, feeble and tired, it was on her breast that girl had sunk as have our children on the breast of their mothers. She had been her mother, faithful persevering, and had brought her up to be at least an honorable and worthy woman in appearance and manner.

This girl owed everything to her. Mrs. Borden was the only mother she had ever known, and she had given to this girl her mother’s love and had given her this love when a child when it was not her own and she had not gone through the pains of childbirth, because it was her husband’s daughter. And then a quarrel; what a quarrel. What a quarrel, Mr. Foreman. A man worth more than a quarter of a million of dollars, wants to give his wife, his faithful wife who has served him thirty years for her board and clothes, who has done his work, who has kept his house, who has reared his children, wants to buy and get with her the interest in a little homestead where her sister lives.

How wicked to have found fault with it. How petty to have found fault with it. Nay, if it was a man sitting in that dock instead of a woman, I would characterize it in more opprobrious terms than those. I trust that in none of the discussion that I engage in

to-day shall I forget the courtesy due from a man to a woman; and although it is my horrible and painful duty to point to the fact of this woman being a murderess, I trust I shall not forget that she is a woman, and I hope I never have. And she repudiated the title that that woman should have had from her. Did you ever hear of such a case as that? It was a living insult to that woman, a living expression of contempt, and that woman repeated it day in and day out, saying to her, as Emma has said, you are not interested in us. You have worked round our father and have got a little miserable pittance of $1,500 out of him, and you shall be my mother no more. Am I exaggerating this thing? She kept her own counsel. Bridget did not know anything about it. She was in the kitchen. This woman never betrayed her feelings except when some one else tried to make her call her mother, and then her temper broke forth. Living or dead, no person should use that word mother to that poor woman unchallenged by Lizzie Borden. She had left it off herself; all through her childhood days, all through her young life Mrs. Borden had been a mother to her as is the mother of every other child to its offspring, and the time comes when they still live in the same house and this child will no longer call her by that name. Mr. Foreman, it means much. It means much. Why does it mean much? They did not eat together. Bridget says so. My distinguished friend tried to get her to take it back, and she did partly. The woman would have taken most anything back under that cross-examination, but this is her testimony: “That is so, they always ate together.” “Yes, they always ate in the same dining-room.” Bridget is going to have her own way yet. But I do not put it on Bridget. I put it on Lizzie herself. When Mrs. Gifford spoke to her, talking about her mother, she said, “Don’t say mother to me.”—that mother who had reared her and was her father’s companion under the roof with whom she was then living, whose household she shared, to whom every debt of gratitude was due and whom she had repudiated as her mother, she could not find the heart to say to this cloakmaker was her mother, for I believe that you believe this story is true—“she is a mean, good for nothing old thing.” Nay, that is not all—“We do not have much to do with her. I stay in my room most of the time.”

Is not that so? Uncle John Morse came to visit them, stayed over night, and during the afternoon and evening, and next morning, and never saw Lizzie at all—her own uncle. “Why, you come down to your meals?” said Mrs. Gifford, and Lizzie said, “Yes, but we

don’t eat with them if we can help it.” I heard what Miss Emma said Friday, and I could but admire the loyalty and fidelity of that unfortunate girl to her still more unfortunate sister. I could not find it in my heart to ask her many questions. She was in the most desperate strait that any innocent woman could be in, her next of kin, her only sister, stood in peril, and she must come to the rescue. She faintly tells us the relations in the family were peaceful, but we sadly know they were not. But you will say, you will fairly say, Mr. Foreman—let me not underrate this thing one atom—you will fairly say, what is that? I don’t know. I don’t know how deep this cancer had eaten in. It makes but little show on the surface. A woman can preserve her appearance of health and strength even when the roots of this foul disease have gone and wound clear around her heart and vital organs. This was a cancer. It was an interruption of what should have been the natural agreeable relations between mother and daughter, a quarrel about property, not her property, but her father’s, and property that he alone had the right to dispose of. A man does not surrender his rights to his own until he is dead, and not even then if he chooses to make a will. She could not brook that that woman should have influence enough over her father to let him procure the little remnant of her own property that had fallen to her from her own folks. She had repudiated the title of mother. She had lived with her in hatred. She had gone on increasing in that hatred until we do not know, we can only guess, how far that sore had festered, how far the blood in that family had been poisoned by the misfortune of these unfortunate relations between them. I come back to that poor woman lying prone, as has been described, in the parlor. It is wicked to have to say it, it is wicked to have to say it, but, gentlemen, there is no escape from the truth. Had she an enemy in all the world? She had one. Was anybody in the world to be benefitted by her taking away? There was one. There was one. It is hard to believe that mere property would have influenced this belief. We are not obliged to, although it appears that property was that which made or broke the relations of that family, and a small amount of property, too. But there was one woman in the world who believed that that dead woman stood between her and her father, and was the enemy of her and the friend of her father, and between whom there had grown up that feeling that prevented her from giving her the title that the ordinary instincts of decency would have entitled her to. Let us examine the wounds upon that woman. So we look at the skull and we look at these wounds, and what do