Lizzie Borden: Murderess?

Elizabeth Borden was born on 19 July, 1860, to respectable middle-class parents and raised in sober, conservative small town America. Her life, as was the case of many others from a similar background, was predictably uneventful, up to a point. She was a Sunday School teacher, an active member of the Temperance League, and was involved in many local charities. But she was to gain notoriety as the only suspect in the brutal slaying of her father and step-mother at the family home in Fall River, Massachusetts on 4 August, 1892.

The Borden’s were not as respectable as they perhaps first appeared. Lizzie’s father, Andrew Borden, was a wealthy man but it had been a fortune largely made upon the misery of others. He was a slum landlord and acted as his own debt collector. An arrogant, humourless, aggressive and irascible man, every morning he would make his rounds issuing threats, collecting money and banking the proceeds. He was known for his meanness, rapacity and lack of compassion. He was, understandably perhaps, hugely unpopular. His wife Abigail, a cold and manipulative woman by all accounts, was aware of this and it troubled her greatly. She had already written to her doctor claiming that someone was trying to poison them and requesting some preventative medicine, and indeed just a few days before the murders the entire family had gone down with food poisoning. The entire family that is except for Lizzie, who had not eaten dinner that day.

The relationship between the Borden’s and their children had been estranged for some time. Lizzie and her sister Emma, lived in a separate part of the house to their parents, and they rarely spent evenings together, and Lizzie never referred to her step-mother as Abby but always as Mrs Borden, even though she had been married to her father for 30 of Lizzie’s 32 years, and she had never known any other mother.

On 4 August, 1892, Andrew Borden returned home from doing his early morning rounds about 11.00 am as usual. He removed his coat and sat upon the sofa looking forward to his regular nap in preparation for a busy afternoon. The family maid, Bridget Sullivan, was also resting in her room. She was tired and unhappy at being told to clean the windows on such a hot day and so soon after having suffered from food poisoning. Around 11.30 am she was woken from her slumbers by cries of  ” Bridget, come down quick!Father’s dead! Somebody came in and killed him!”