It is terribly significant. There is that in this case which is far deeper than these accidental variations. She says to Bridget, not to an officer, “I was out in the back yard and heard a groan, and came in and the screen door was wide open,” I may have occasion to say that that story was not true either, and was not consistent with any other story that she told. Dr. Bowen came next, I believe. He says, “Where have you been?” O, pregnant question that nobody could fail to ask. “In the barn looking for some irons or iron,” she answers. Mrs. Churchill came next—I may not have the order right—and that honest woman asked it the first thing, “Where were you when it happened, Lizzie?” “I went to the barn to get a piece of iron.” Miss Russell heard the remark. She does not distinctly remember asking it, and she is her friend: “What did you go to the barn for, Lizzie?” “I went to get a piece of tin or iron to fix my screen.” And Mr. Fleet came in, and politely, as you may believe, courteously, as you are glad to think, he talked to her about that important question of where she was when this thing happened. Let me read it word for word, for it is vital and significant and Mr. Buck will not say that one word of it is misconstrued or misremembered or falsely stated. He asked her if she knew anything about the murders. “She said that she did not, all she knew was that her father came home about 10:30 or 10:45, went into the sitting room, sat down in a large chair, took out some papers and looked at them. She was ironing in the dining room some handkerchiefs, as she stated. She saw that her father was feeble, and she went to him and advised and assisted him to lie down upon the sofa. She then went into the dining room to her ironing, but left after her father was lain down, and went out into the yard and went up in the barn. I asked her how long she remained in the barn; she said she remained in the barn about half an hour. I then asked her what she meant by ‘up in the barn.’
She said, ‘I mean up in the barn, upstairs, sir.’ She said after she had been up there about half an hour she came down again, went into the house and found her father lying on the lounge.” Mr. Foreman and gentlemen, we must judge all facts, all circumstances as they appeal to your common sense. There is no other test; there is no other duty; there is no other way of arriving at justice, and tried by that standard I assert that that story is simply incredible. I assert that that story is simply absurd. I assert that that story is not within the bounds of reasonable possibilities.
That is not all. Saturday again the mayor of the city, who I assume is a gentleman, whom I know you will believe to be one, and Marshal Hilliard, who has answered by his dignified and courteous and wholly respectable presence all the slanders you have heard about him in his simple and unaffected way of testifying in this case, which is refutation enough of all the wicked things that have been said of him—that men came there Saturday evening, and again incidentally that story was referred to. She told her friend Alice that she went to get a piece of iron to fix her screen. She told them that she went out into the barn to get some sinkers. It is not so much the contradiction I call your attention to, for I want to be entirely fair, for both errands might have been in her mind.
Why could we not have had somebody to have told us what was the screen that needed fixing, and to have corroborated that story by finding the piece of iron that was put into the screen when she was left alone and when she came back in her fright. Show us the fish line that these sinkers went on. It was easy to do if they were in existence, if there was any truth in the story. Show us something by which we can verify this ferocious fact, that the alibi she was driven to put for herself is a good one. I will spend a little time in the prosecution of this argument to discuss Mr. Lubinsky. What he saw and when he saw it are absolutely indefinite. Let me treat him with entire fairness and justice. To begin with, he is a discarded witness. He went with his story first to Wilkinson and then to Mr. Mullaly and then to Mr. Phillips before the hearing in the district court. Mr. Mullaly tells you just what he told him. He saw Mr. Mullaly and told him it was about half past 10 when he went by and saw somebody coming from the barn. That was on the 8th day of August. About two weeks after the time—I do not need the record, for I remember it as though it was yesterday—about two weeks after that time he told Mr. Phillips. Yes, it would be the 22d of August. This hearing ran through the 24th, 25th, 26th, 27th, and into the first
day of September. He told a reporter, and I presume it was published, although I do not know about that. I won’t say that, for I don’t know. Mr. Phillips was present there in court; witnesses were called for the defense, and Lubinsky was not called. He had not got things patched up. And I want to know in this connection what was the necessity of having that line drawn so carefully by the surveyor across the plan of the first day. What has been the significance of that thing by which it was made to appear that a surveyor could find a line clear from a point on the street to the barn door? And you were asked to squint across there. You saw that you could not see the fraction of a rabbit that came out of that barn door. Has that any connection with the first attempt at Lubinsky? I do not know. It is one of those things they have started and have flashed in the pan. Medley was the first one there. He got the news before 11:30. He took a team that was coming up the street, and drove as fast as he could drive it. He went to the station house and got the men, started for the Borden house, and as he went by the city hall clock it was nineteen or twenty minutes before 12. He went there; he went into the house. He saw Miss Borden. He came out and went into the barn. Other men did the same thing. It occurred to many, he went there first because he was the one that found the door shut, and the others, excepting these wonderful boy detectives, found it open. All the contradiction of Medley is an attempt to contradict him about time. Something has been said, Mr. Foreman and gentlemen, as to the conduct of the defendant during this trying time. In my desire to say no word that is not borne out by the exact facts, I forbear to criticise or to ask you to consider against her her general demeanor after this tragedy. I quite agree for once with my distinguished friend in his suggestion that the absence of tears, that the icy demeanor may have either meant consciousness of guilt or consciousness of loss.
I would not lift the weight of my finger to urge that this woman remarkable though she is, nervy as she is, brave as she is, cool as she is, should be condemned because grief, it may have been, but for other things in the case, drove back the tears to their source and forbade her to show the emotions that belong to the sex. But there are some things that are pregnant. My distinguished friend tells of the frequency of presentiments. They are frequent in the storybooks, Mr. Foreman. If they occur in real life they are usually thought of afterward. Did you ever hear one expressed beforehand? Tell me that this woman was physically incapable of that deed? My
distinguished friend has not read female character enough to know that when a woman dares she dares, and when she will she will, and that given a woman that has that absolute command of herself who told Mrs. Reagan even, that the failure to break that egg was the first time she had ever failed in anything she undertook, a woman whose courage surpassed that of any man I am talking to, I very humbly believe—tell me that she is physically incapable of this act? But those are trifles, Mr. Foreman. Those are trifles. Those are little chips that do not perhaps directly indicate which way the current flows. But there is more in the case than that. Of course the question arises to one’s lips. How could she have avoided the spattering of her dress with blood if she was the author of these crimes? As to the first crime, it is scarcely necessary to attempt to answer the question. In the solitude of that house, with ample fire in the stove, with ample wit of woman nobody has suggested that as to the first crime there was not ample opportunity, ample means and that nothing could be suggested as a reason why all the evidence of that crime could not have been amply and successfully concealed. But as to the second murder the question is one of more difficulty. I cannot answer it. You cannot answer it. You are neither murderers nor women. You have neither the craft of the assassin nor the cunning and deftness of the sex. There are some things, however, in the case that we know, and one of them is, and perhaps one of the pregnant facts in the case is, that when the officers had completed their search, and in good faith had asked her to produce the dress she was wearing that morning, they were fooled with that garment which lies on that trunk, which was not upon her when any human being saw her. That is a pretty bold assertion. Let us see what the evidence of it is, because as to that matter the evidence is contradictory, and it is the first proposition, I believe that I have addressed touching which there is even an attempt to show contradictory evidence. I have trod on ground on which no attempt has been made to block the ordinary course of reasoning, and I now approach the first subject in which there is any attempt to show contradiction, and it turns out to be no contradiction whatever. This dress has been described to you as a silk dress and dark blue evidently, a dress with a figure which is not at all like a diamond, a dress which is not cheap, a dress which would not be worn in ironing by any prudent woman, of course not. It is an afternoon dress. Do your wives dress in silk when they go down in the kitchen to work, and in their household duties in the morning before dinner? But I am
not compelled to stay at suppositions of reasoning: I come to facts. There was one woman in this world who saw Lizzie Borden after these murders were done, and when she saw her did not suspect that murder had been done.
Who was that? It was that clear, intelligent, honest daughter of one of Fall River’s most honored citizens, Adelaide Churchill. Everybody else saw her when they knew murder had been done. Addie Churchill saw her when the most she suspected was that somebody had become sick again. She describes the dress she had on that morning. I will read it, word for word, to you, because it is vital: “It looked like a light blue and white ground work; it seemed like calico or cambric, and it had a light blue and white ground work with a navy blue diamond printed on it.” Was the whole dress alike, the skirt and waist? It looked so to me. Was that the dress she had on this morning (showing dark blue dress?) She did not wish to harm a hair of Lizzie’s head. She was her neighbor and her friend, and she would avoid it if she could. But she answered, “It does not look like it.” Mr. Moody puts it again: “Was it, was it?” Ah, Addie Churchill will have to give an answer which will convict this woman of putting up a dress which is not the one she wore. She is no police detective conspiring against her life, but her next door neighbor, her friend, and her friend to-day. When Mr. Moody puts the straight question to her: “Was it?” she answers: “That is not the dress I have described.” Still it is not quite close enough. My learned friend wants it answered more closely, and asks, “Was it the dress she had on?” Mrs. Churchill can avoid answering no longer, and she says, “I did not see her with it on that morning.” She further describes the dress as having the ground work of a color “like blue and white mixed.” It is not the testimony of one who wants her convicted. I may well believe, I am glad to believe, although I know nothing of it, that it is the testimony of one who would rejoice if she were not convicted. Now comes another witness, who I believe would cut his heart strings before he would say a word against that woman if he could help it, and that is her physician and friend, Dr. Seabury W. Bowen, who away back in the early stages of this case gave testimony, and the testimony is all the more valuable because it comes from her intimate friend, and was given at a time when it was not supposed there was ever to be any discussion about it. He undertakes to describe the dress. Do you remember how Lizzie was dressed that morning? “It is pretty hard work for me. Probably if I could see a dress
something like it I could guess, but I could not describe it; it was a sort of drab, not much color to it to attract my attention—a sort of morning calico dress, I should judge.” That is not all. The morning dress she had worn many times, as Miss Emma is obliged to say, poor girl. She put it in her testimony (she wanted to help her sister) that it was very early in the morning. Oh, unfortunate expression. Did you ever know a girl to change her dress twice a morning, ever in the world? It was a morning dress, and the day before the tragedy happened Bridget tells us that that cheap morning dress, light blue with a dark figure, Wednesday morning the dress she had on was of that description, and it was this very bedford cord. Undoubtedly. She never wore it afterward. Friday she has on this dress. Saturday she has on this dress, mornings and afternoon. It is good enough for her to wear then. Perhaps there is not any distinction of morning and afternoon then in that house of the dead. We have had evidence of the character of the search that was made in the house. It can, perhaps, all be well summed up in the suggestion that the search of Thursday was perfunctory, insufficient and indecisive. It was with no particular definite aim in view. It was absolutely without any idea that the inmates of the house knew of this crime. It was that sort of a search which goes through and does not see what it ought to see. But it was enough to set them on their guard. There was in that house somewhere a bedford cord dress. That bedford cord dress had been stained with paint. I welcome that fact. My learned associate never said it had not been stained with paint. I believe it had. No, I ought not to say that. I hope, I may be corrected if I say that I believe it at any time. There is no assertion or pretence that it had not been stained with paint. It had not stopped the wearing of it, though.