Lizzie Borden

Lizzie Borden

On a hot morning on august 4, 1892, Mr. Andrew Borden and his wife, Abby Borden, were brutally murdered. A daughter of the victims, Lizzie Borden was arrested, tried and acquitted of the crime. “ She was a woman of spotless character and reputation, and more than that she was educated, refined and prominently connected with the work of the Christian church in the Fall River”(Gates 2).The town and the country were divided in their opinions of who could commit such horrifying murders. Many theories have been made to explain that day; the finger has been pointed in every direction- even a Chinese Sunday school student of Lizzies. To this day people are unsure as to weather or not Lizzie brutally murdered her parents.

Background/Synopsis:

The day started off with the usual routine. Mr. And Mrs. Borden made their way downstairs to eat breakfast a little after seven. The next to wake up was Lizzie’s uncle, who had shown up unannounced and with out luggage the evening before so he could visit a friend in the area the next day. The day of the murder he left the house at nine thirty. Prior to that time Lizzie work up, waited for her parents to finish eating and went downstairs herself to eat breakfast. (It had become a custom for her and her sister to avoid eating meals with their father and stepmother.) Not long after this Mrs. Borden asked the maid to wash the windows. She did as she was told and spent the rest of the day going throughout the house. Mr. Borden went out to run some errands then the came home, lay down on the couch and proceeded to take a nap. This was the last time that he was seen alive. (Martins, Michael, and Binette 72)

After breakfast Lizzie went outside to the barn to find some metal of some sort so that she could use it on her planned fishing trip that day. In the twenty minutes she spent in the barn her parents were murdered (Martins, Michael, and Binette 78).

An autopsy was done on the dinning room table later that day which determined that Mr. Borden was sleeping when he died. The cause of death was “ten blows to the head with an axe” (Porter 8). Meanwhile upstairs while making the bed, Mrs. Borden was murdered with “a total of 18 gaping wounds, over 1 of which went through the skull” (Flenn 2).

Lizzie was the first to discover her father’s body. The maid, who was resting in her room in the attic, was called...

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Lizzie A. Borden; The Knowlton Papers, 1892-1893 : A Collection of. 400 p. Fall

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River: Press of J.D. Munroe, 1893.

9.) "Arrests To Be Made: The Inquiries by Lizzie Borden About Poison Seem Peculiar."

New York Times, Saturday, August 6, 1892: 1.

10.) Gates, David. "A New Whack at the Borden Case." Newsweek, June 4, 1984: 12.

11.) The Trial of Lizzie Borden, with a history of the case" by Edmund Pearson