The Fall River Tragedy: A History of the Borden Murders

by Edwin H. Porter

No, gentlemen. In the first place, Bridget was on guard at that back door until she had washed the windows, and no note came that way. She testifies, and you can easily believe her testimony, because the front door was locked with three locks all the time, that nobody came to the front door and rang the bell with a note. I said that Almighty providence directed the course of this world to bring

murderers to grief and justice. Little did it occur to Lizzie Borden when she told that lie to her father that there would be manifold witnesses of the fatality of it. They have advertised for the writer of the note, which was never written and which never came. Gentlemen, incredulity sometimes can be dismissed by evidence, but I am not looking in the face of one single man that will believe for an instant that the writer of that note would not months ago have come forward and cleared that thing up. There never was one. Ah, but my distinguished friend is pleased to suggest—he hardly dares to argue it, such is his insight and fairness—he is pleased to suggest that it was part of the scheme of assassination. How! To write a note to get a woman away when he was going there to assassinate her? What earthly use was there in writing a note to get rid of Mrs. Borden, when there would still be left Lizzie and Bridget in the house? O, no, that is too wild and absurd. The whole falsehood of that note came from the woman in whose keeping Mrs. Borden was left by Andrew Borden, and it was as false as was the answer that Cain gave to his Maker when he said to him, “Where is thy brother Abel?” I regret to ask you so to believe, gentlemen. It pains me beyond expression to be compelled to state these things. God forbid that anybody should have committed this murder, but somebody did, and when I have found that she was killed, not by the strong hand of man, but by the weak and ineffectual blows of woman, when I find that those are the blows of hatred rather than of strength, when I find that she is left alone at the very moment of murder, shut up in that house where every sound went from one end to the other, with the only person in all God’s universe who could say she was not her friend, with the only person in the universe who could be benefited by her taking away, and when I find, as I found, and as you must find, if you answer your consciences in this case, that the story told about a note coming is as false as the crime itself, I am not responsible, Mr. Foreman, you are not responsible for the conclusion to which you are driven. Bridget finished the washing of her windows, came into the house, no one being below the stairs, took her step ladder and began the work upon the inside of the windows. Meanwhile the old gentleman was finishing the last walk of his life. You find him leaving his house by the back door, where Mrs. Churchill saw him, probably, although it may not have been the occasion of his leaving. We certainly find him down at his accustomed place in the bank that had honored him by making him its president, at his usual hour of 9:30. We find him going on from

this to the other bank that honored him by making him a trustee, a little later in the day. The malice was all before this fact. The wickedness was all before the fourth day of August. The ingratitude, the poisoning, the hate, the stabbing of the mind, which is worse than the stabbing of the body, had gone on under that roof for many, many moons. All we know is that there was a jealousy which was unworthy of that woman. All we know is that, as Emma expressed it herself, they felt that he was not interested in them and no step could be taken by that poor man, no suggestion could be made by that poor man, that would not fan the embers of that discontent into the active fires of hatred that we have seen, alas, too many times manifested in many an unhappy home. I speak of these things, Mr. Foreman, at this time because I have left the dead body of that aged woman lying upon the guest chamber floor, in the room where she was last at work, and am asking you to come down with me to a far sadder tragedy, to the most horrible word that the English language knows, to a parricide. I do not undertake, far be it from me to seek to detract one iota from the terrible significance of that word; and when I am asked to fight and prove and declare and explain a motive for that act, well may my feeble powers quail at the undertaking.

There may be that in this case which saves us from the idea that Lizzie Borden planned to kill her father. I hope she did not. But Lizzie Andrew Borden, the daughter of Andrew Jackson Borden, never came down those stairs. It was not Lizzie Andrew Borden, the daughter of Andrew Jackson Borden, that came down those stairs, but a murderess, transformed from all the thirty-three years of an honest life, transformed from the daughter, transformed from the ties of affections to the most consummate criminal we have read of in all our history or works of fiction. She came down to meet that stern old man. His picture shows that, if nothing more, even in death. That just old man, of the stern puritan stock, that most of you are from, gentlemen, that man who loved his daughters, but who also loved his wife, as the Bible commanded him to. And, above all, the one man in all this universe who would know who killed his wife. She had not thought of that. She had gone on. There is cunning in crime, but there is blindness in crime, too. She had gone on with stealth and cunning, but she had forgotten the hereafter. They always do. And when the deed was done she was coming downstairs to face Nemesis. There wouldn’t be any question of what he would know of the reason why that woman lay in death. He knew who disliked her. He knew who could not tolerate her

presence under the roof. He knew the discussion which had led up to the pitch of frenzy which resulted in her death, and she didn’t dare to let him live, father though he was, and bound to her by every tie of affection. It is the melancholy, the inevitable attribute of crime that it is the necessary and fruitful parent of crime. He moved slowly. He went to the back door, as was his custom, but nobody was there to open it, and so he went around to the front door, as very likely he often did, supposing, of course, that he could gain entrance, as any man does into his own house in the day time, by the use of a spring lock. We have heard something about the noise and confusion of that street, but Bridget’s ears, which are no quicker than Lizzie’s, heard him as he put the key into the lock, and came to the door and let him in. He came in and passed into the dining room, because she was, I presume, working in the sitting room, took off his coat and sat down and replaced it with a cardigan jacket and down came Lizzie from the very place where Mrs. Borden lay dead and told him what we cannot believe to be true about where his wife was. I am told, gentlemen, that circumstances are to be regarded with suspicion. Mr. Foreman, a falsehood that goes right to the very vitals of crime is not a circumstance; it is proof. Where was that mother? She knew. She told what never was true. That would pass off for awhile; that would keep the old man quiet for a time, but it would not last.

ATTORNEY GENERAL PILLSBURY.

She took out her ironing-board. Why had she not been ironing in the cellar part of the house. Mr. Foreman, we do not know. She had no duties around the household, so Emma tells us. There

was nothing for her to do. Bridget goes into the dining room. Having finished her windows in the sitting room, it took only a moment to go inside. Comes into the dining room to wash the windows and the old gentleman comes down from his room and goes into the sitting room and sits down. She suggests to him, with the spirit in which Judas kissed his master, that, as he is weary with his day’s work, it would be well for him to lie down upon the sofa and rest. Then she goes into the dining room again, gets her ironing board, and proceeds to iron her handkerchiefs. Bridget finishes her work. She tells Bridget, and that is the first time that Bridget heard it directly, as I stated to you yesterday, that if she goes out that afternoon to be sure to lock the doors, because Mrs. Borden had gone out on a sick call. And she says: “Miss Lizzie, who is sick?” Miss Lizzie replies: “I don’t know, but it must be in town, for she had a note this morning.” She never did, and Bridget goes upstairs to take her little rest and leaves this woman ironing those handkerchiefs nearer to her father as he lay on that sofa than my distinguished friend is to me, at this moment. Again she was alone with her victim. O, unfortunate combination of circumstances, always. Again she is alone in the house with the man who was found murdered. It may be safely said to be less than twenty minutes from that time she calls Bridget down stairs and tells her that her father is killed. There is another straw, Mr. Foreman, another chip on the surface, not floating in an eddy, but always out in the middle of the currant, that tells us with irresistible distinctness of what happened after Bridget went upstairs. She had a good fire to iron the clothes with. Why do I say that? I will not speak without the evidence if I can help it. Officer Harrington comes along, takes a car that reaches city hall at 12:15, goes along Main street, goes to the house, talks with Lizzie, and, last of all, takes the cover off the stove and sees there, and I will read his own words: “The fire was near extinguished; on the end there was a little fire, I should judge about as large as the palm of my hand. The embers were about dying.” That was as early as 12:30. I need not say to you that if there was fire enough to be seen at 12:30 there was fire enough to work with an hour and a half before 11 o’clock. There was fire enough. There is no trouble on that account. It was a little job she had to do, nine handkerchiefs at the outside, perhaps eight or seven, and when this thing is over Miss Russell gets the handkerchiefs and takes them upstairs, where we find a fatal thing, we find that four or five, I give the exact words of those handkerchiefs: “Are

ironed and two or three are sprinkled ready to iron.” Whatever else is true, she had begun her work before Bridget went upstairs, she was engaged in it when Bridget left her. It was a job that could not have taken her any more than ten minutes at the outside, if I may use the common expression of mankind in that sort of work, and the clock of Lizzie’s course of life stopped the instant Bridget left the room. What for? What for, gentlemen? It would have taken but a minute or so to finish them. The day was well gone, the dinner hour was approaching. There were four or five to take away and but two or three to finish, and in less time than I am speaking it would have been done.