The Fall River Tragedy: A History of the Borden Murders

by Edwin H. Porter

we read there? We know afterwards, by another examination downstairs, that no thief did this thing; there was no object of plunder. We are spared the suspicion that any base animal purposes had to do with this crime. No, Mr. Foreman, there was nothing in these blows but hatred, but hatred, and a desire to kill. What sort of blows were they? Some struck here at an angle, badly aimed; some struck here in the neck, badly directed; some pattered on top of the head and didn’t go through; some, where the skull was weaker, went through. A great strong man would have taken a blow of that hatchet and made an end of it. The hand that held the weapon was not the hand of masculine strength. It was the hand of a person strong only in hate and desire to kill. We have not proved anything yet, but we must take things as they come, no matter where they lead us. It was not the work of a man who, with a blow of that hatchet, could have smashed any part of that skull, and whose unerring aim would have made no false blow or false work. It was the indecisive blow of hatred, the weak, puttering, badly aimed, nerveless blows—I forbear for the present to bring that sentence to a conclusion, for I won’t do it until I am obliged to. I won’t ask you, until I am obliged to, to listen to it. Now we must go back and see what the circumstances of that crime were, for that is the crime we are trying. We will come at the other one by and by, and see how and when and why they happened. But now we are trying that crime, the motive of that crime, the probable author of that crime, who could have committed that crime, what sort of person committed that crime, and why it was done. We find, Mr. Foreman, perhaps the most remarkable house that you ever heard of. My distinguished friend has admitted so many things that I am saved the necessity of arguing very much about the circumstances surrounding the house. Everything was locked up. Why, did you notice there was even the barbed wire at the bottom of the fence as well as on the top and on the stringers? Everything was shut up. It was the most zealously guarded house I ever heard of. The cellar door was found locked by all the witnesses that examined it. The barn door was locked at night and was kept locked all night and opened in the morning, by the undisputed testimony of Bridget, whom nobody has suggested or ventured to suggest has told anything more than she knows in the case. The closet door, up to the head of the stairs, was found locked by Mr. Fleet, and every time that he wanted to go in there, or anybody else wanted to go in there, or Lizzie herself, she furnished the keys that unlocked it. So that door was locked up. The front door

was a door which had been kept by a spring lock until that day. The day before, when Dr. Bowen called, Bridget let him in by the spring lock. That night, when Lizzie came home from her call on Miss Russell, she let herself in by the spring lock. There isn’t an atom of evidence that up to the time of this tragedy and when people began to come in and out and upset the ordinary arrangements of that house, but that the front door had always been kept by a spring lock and opened in the morning. That morning it was not opened. It was that woman’s business to open it, and she did not open it. She came down stairs and went into the kitchen and went about her ordinary avocations, and by and by, when Mr. Borden came home, he expected to find it unlocked, because he tried his key to it and it wouldn’t fit, and he had to call her attention to get in. And it was not only with the spring lock, but with the bolt and with the lower lock (all three put together) as people lock their door when they go to bed. Not the shutting in of an assassin, as my distinguished friend has suggested, who was trying to lock himself into the house, wild and improbable as that suggestion is. Then the screen door. It may be, perhaps, as good a way to do as any to refresh your memories about it as well as my own. I will go back to the night before. That afternoon at 5 o’clock that screen door was locked. That night when Bridget went out she locked the back door after her. That night when she came back she found it locked, and she locked up the screen door and the outside door and went upstairs to bed. No chance for anybody to get in that day. The cellar was never unlocked except on the Tuesday before—and I get this right from the testimony because I do not want to argue anything but what is strictly correct. The next morning Bridget got up at 6:15 and took in the milk and hooked the screen door, unlocked the big door. A little while afterwards Mrs. Borden came down, some time between 6:30 and 6:45, and went into the sitting room. Mr. Borden came a little while afterwards, put his key on the shelf, and unhooked the screen door and went into the yard, Bridget remaining in the kitchen all the time. When he came back Bridget was out of view of the screen door and don’t know whether he hooked it or not.

But the next person that went out was Morse, and Mr. Morse tells us—for he fills all that cavity up—Mr. Morse tells us that he unhooked the screen door when he went out and Mr. Borden hooked it after him, so that Mr. Borden must have hooked it when he came in. Then, when Mr. Borden came in he hooked the screen door again, Bridget being on guard in the kitchen all the time. Then

Bridget went about her work, eating her breakfast, clearing off the dining room dishes, right there on guard in the kitchen all the time. By and by Lizzie came down. Lizzie came into the kitchen, and her father had not then gone and Bridget went out into the yard a few minutes, because she was sick, too. She remained there in the yard for a moment or two, and when she came to, Lizzie had got through her breakfast and had got back into the other part of the house, she didn’t know where, and Mr. Borden had gone off down town. When she came in she hooked the screen door. Up to that time, Mr. Foreman, no human being could have got into that house. We go further than that. By and by Bridget goes into the dining room to clear off her dining room things, and sees Mrs. Borden dusting in and out of the sitting room and the dining room, and Mrs. Borden directs her, when she gets through her work, to wash the windows. Bridget goes on about her work and Mrs. Borden disappears upstairs and Lizzie is out of sight. She gets through with her work—and I call your particular attention to this. She gets through with her work, Bridget does, goes down cellar and gets her pail, comes back into the house, goes through the house and puts down the windows and there isn’t anybody below the stairs. Mr. Borden has long since gone down town. It must have been about half past nine when Bridget went out to wash the windows, or possibly a little later. She goes out of the screen door, which up to that time no human being could have gone through. She has no more than got out of doors than Lizzie, who had not been down stairs up to that time, who had not gone away from the house, and, as she herself says, saw her mother up there making the bed, or working in that guest chamber, Lizzie comes to the back door to see if Bridget is fairly out of doors, goes back into the house, and the murder is then done, as Prof. Wood’s clock tells us.

Never mind the impossibility—I won’t argue that now, Mr. Foreman—never mind the impossibility for the present of imagining a person who was so familiar with the habits of that family, who was so familiar with the interior of that house, who could forsee the things that the family themselves could not see, who was so lost to all human reason, who was so utterly criminal as to set out without any motive whatever, as to have gone to that house that morning, to have penetrated through the cordon of Bridget and Lizzie, and pursued that poor woman up the stairs to her death, and then waited, weapon in hand until the house should be filled up with people again that he might complete his work.

I won’t discuss with you the impossibility of that thing for the present. I will come back to the facts in this case and ask you whether or not, at that time when the murder was done—up to that time there had been no room for the assassin to come in, and after that time the house was there alone with Lizzie and her murdered victim. The dead body tells us another thing. It is a circumstance, but it is one of those circumstances that cannot be cross-examined nor made fun of nor talked out of court. The poor woman was standing when she was struck, and fell with all the force of that two hundred pounds of flesh, flat and prone dead on the floor. That jar could not have failed to have been heard all over that house. They talk about its being a noisy street. Why, Bridget tells us that she could hear the screen door from her room when it slammed. She did hear Andrew Borden trying the lock of the front door and went to let him in without the bell being rung. Lizzie heard her down there letting her father in. Nothing happened in one part of the house that wasn’t heard in the other. My friend has spent some time in demonstrating, as he believes, to you, the unlikelihood of her seeing her murdered mother as she went up and down the stairs. But Lizzie Borden has ears as well as eyes. If she was downstairs she was in the passageway of the assassin. If she was upstairs there was nothing to separate her from the murder but the thinness of that deal door that you saw. And do you believe for a moment, Mr. Foreman and gentlemen, do you believe for a moment that those blows could have been struck—that woman was struck in a way that did not make her insensible—that she could have been struck without groaning or screaming; that she could have fallen without a jar, a woman as heavy as I am (I just use that by way of illustration), on that floor, nearer than I am to you, sir, from Lizzie, and she know nothing of it? If the facts I have put to you, Mr. Foreman, are true, at the very instant when the murders were committed we leave Lizzie and Mrs. Borden in the house together. Was she in the passageway when this assassin came in? She alone knows. Was she in her room when that heavy body fell to the floor? She alone knows. But we know, alas, we know, Mr. Foreman, that when Bridget opened that screen door and went out to wash the windows, after Mr. Borden had met his half-past nine appointment at the bank, that she left in the house this poor woman and the only enemy she had in the world. And there had been no more chance, if there was any conceivable possibility existing to mankind that anybody else got in than there would be of getting into this room and you and I not seeing them. But that is not all.

It is provided, as I humbly and devoutly believe, by the divine justice itself, that no matter how craftily murder is planned, there is always some point where the skill and cunning of the assassin fails him. It failed her. It failed her at a vital point, a point which my distinguished friend has attempted to answer, if I may be permitted to say so, and has utterly failed. She was alone in that house with that murdered woman. She could not have fallen without her knowledge. The assassin could not have come in without her knowledge. She was out of sight and Mrs. Borden was out of sight, and by and by there was coming into the house a stern and just man, who knew all the bitterness there was between them. There came into that house a stern and just man who would have noticed the absence of his wife, and who would have said to her, as the Almighty said to Cain. “Where is Abel, thy brother?” And that question must be answered. He came in; he sat down; she came to him, and she said to him: “Mrs. Borden”—she would not even call her “mother” then—“Mrs. Borden has had a note and gone out.” That stilled his fears; that quieted any apprehensions he might have felt or reason of her absence either from the sitting room or the kitchen, or her own room upstairs, where he was sure to go with his key, as he did. When Bridget went to her room, and I call your attention to this as being the first information that Bridget had of it—it will appear by and by by the evidence itself—before Bridget went upstairs to her room Lizzie says to her, “If you go out, be sure and lock the door, for Mrs. Borden has gone out on a sick call and I might go out, too.” Bridget says, “Miss Lizzie, who is sick?” naturally enough. She said. “I don’t know, but she had a note this morning and it must be in town.”

Mrs. Churchill came over. “Where is mother, Lizzie?” She said: “I don’t know. She had a note to go to see some one who was sick, but I don’t know but she is killed, too, for I think I heard her come in.” I will talk about that by and by, if I don’t weary you too much. Then she said something to Fleet. Although she told Fleet that the last time she saw her stepmother was 9 o’clock, and she was then making her bed in the room where she was found dead, she said, “some one brought a letter or a note to Mrs. Borden,” and she thought she had gone out, and had not known of her return. Then when Bridget came back she wanted to find her. She knew that one of the mother’s only relatives was Mrs. Whitehead, the sister of her husband, as it turned out, because it turned out by Miss Emma’s cross-examination and she said: “Oh, Lizzie, if I knew

where Mrs. Whitehead lived I would go and see if Mrs. Borden is there and tell her that Mr. Borden is very sick.” Mr. Foreman, charged with the responsibility of the solemn trust imposed upon him, my learned associate said in opening this case that that statement was a lie. Conscious as I am, Mr. Foreman, that any unjust or harsh word of mine might do injury that I never could recover my peace of conscience for, I reaffirm that serious charge. No note came; no note was written; nobody brought a note; nobody was sick. Mrs. Borden had not had a note. My learned friend said, “I would stake the case on the hatchet.” I will stake it on your belief or disbelief in the truth or falsity of that proposition. Afterwards, after Lizzie had told Bridget that Mrs. Borden had had a note to go out and see some one, that Mrs. Borden had gone out on a sick call and had had the note come that morning, she told her before she went to the room and that murder was discovered, and after it was a matter of common talk, and when Mrs. Churchill was asking Bridget not as a source of original information but for all the news there could be had about it, Bridget then said to her, not “to my own knowledge Mrs. Borden had a note to go out to see some one who was sick,” but repeated it as the story of the original and only author, Lizzie Borden. Obviously that is so, because when my learned and distinguished friend comes to the cross-examination of Bridget, this is what Bridget said, that she never had any knowledge of a note at all, except what Lizzie told her. Pardon me for reading it, because this is vital to the case. “You simply say that you didn’t see anybody come with a note?” “No, sir; I did not.” “Easy enough for anybody to come with a note to the house and you not know it, wasn’t it?” “Well, I don’t know if a note came to the back door that I wouldn’t know. The door bell never rang that morning at all.” “But they wouldn’t necessarily go to the back door, would they?” “No. I never heard anything about a note; whether they got it or not, I don’t know. I never heard anything about a note.” She was obviously telling the story as Lizzie had told it to her. Bridget had last seen Mrs. Borden dusting in the sitting room. She had been told by Lizzie that she had got a note and gone out.