America's 'Innocent Axe-Murderer' Lizzie Borden

Today we're revisiting an episode which explores one of the most infamous trials in American history. Lizzie Borden's story is breathtaking even today. In 1893 she was accused of using an axe to murder her father and step-mother. The case obsessed America and despite evidence against her, Lizzie was let off. Was that justice? Maddy Pelling tells Anthony Delaney the story today. Edited by Tomos Delargy. Produced by Freddy Chick. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener surveyhere https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/6FFT7MK. All music from Epidemic Sounds. After Dark is a History Hit podcast. History Hit is part of Little Dot Studios, a Certified B Corp™ Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards. Click to place your vote on the Spotify mobile app: https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJa Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• 1:36Speaker 01

  Hello there. You are, of course, listening to After Dark. And today, we're focusing on the case of Lizzie Borden, one of the most famous murderers in American history.

• 1:50Speaker 00

  June 5th, 1893. We're in New Bedford, Massachusetts, standing in the corner of a crowded courtroom. We've had to jostle our way in. It's loud in here. Men and women are discussing the case with a kind of electric excitement. There's debate. The man behind us waves his hand enthusiastically in the air, as though trying to hammer home his point. His friend shakes his head in disagreement. The jury, two rows of near-identical men in three-piece suits, their faces dressed with whiskers and moustaches, and their waists glinting with pocket watches, look grim.

• 2:35Speaker 00

  And so they should, for the task is not an easy one. They must decide on the guilt or innocence of a young woman in a case so ghastly. The details of it make everyone, from factory workers to magistrates in the industrial town where it happened, blush in horror. Quite suddenly, a hush falls in the room. A door swings loudly open and through it comes the accused herself. She is small and neat, dressed in black, with an elegant pin fastened high at her throat.

• 3:17Speaker 00

  In her hand, she carries a bouquet of fresh flowers, the petals trembling slightly as she steps up to the dock to take her place. Over the next few days, this apparently demure, respectable woman will be fighting for her life. The question is, did she take those of her closest family away from them?

• 4:07Speaker 01

  This is After Dark. I'm Antony.

• 4:09Speaker 00

  And I'm Maddie.

• 4:10Speaker 01

  And today, we are delving into one of the most notorious cases, as I said at the outset, in American history. It's a locked-room mystery, the story of horrible violence. And then at its heart, a seemingly glamorous, if that's the right word, but strange young woman. It is, of course, the case of Lizzie Borden. You might remember that in June, we had an episode about the murder trial of Polly Bedine, aka the Witch of New York. And that's a fascinating case, too. And our guest was Alex Hortus. And he told us about Polly's trial and how sensational it was, until it was eclipsed by Lizzie Borden. So this is going to be really interesting. And go back and listen to that Polly Bedine case if you haven't already heard it,

• 4:55Speaker 01

  because it really is fascinating. And it sets up the context for what's about to unfold in the Lizzie Borden case. So speaking of context, Maddie, set the scene for us. I believe we are in 1892, America in 1892.

• 5:08Speaker 00

  We are indeed. I got really carried away researching this year. Loads happened, but it's now become a bit of a running joke in my household. I got so excited that I started telling my husband about all the things that happened in 1892. But I led with the fact that the first escalator was installed that year in Coney Island. And he laughed at me so much. And now, anything that I say is interesting, he says, was it as interesting as the escalator situation in 1892?

• 5:35Speaker 01

  That is also a terrible story. I am with Matt on this. Escalators do not make for a first lead. You should have picked something else. I mean, the first fingerprint bureau is in my notes. That comes next. That's way better.

• 5:47Speaker 00

  I know. It really is. It really is. So I'm sorry to escalator fans out there, but that was quite a boring opening. Yeah, so there's so much that changes. You know, early on in the final decade of the 19th century, the world is changing hugely. So we do have the first escalators at Coney Island. We've also got Rudolph Diesel patenting his engine. We've got, as you say, the first fingerprinting bureau opens in Buenos Aires, which, of course, we're not going to see Buenos Aires in the story, but interesting to think about these advances in policing taking place.

• 6:19Speaker 01

  That's amazing, yeah.

• 6:20Speaker 00

  Not necessarily in America. In the world of sport, something you and I are obviously very passionate about, Liverpool Football Club is founded. And in the US, the first basketball game is played in public. And for anyone who didn't know, it's at the YMCA and it's played between its students and the faculty there. There's lots of social change happening. So Yale University admits its first woman to graduate school there. And in Louisiana, a mixed-race man called Homer Plessy is arrested for sitting in a whites-only train carriage in protest of, of course, racial segregation, which is absolutely fascinating and quite early on, I would say.

• 7:02Speaker 00

  In terms of culture and politics, we've got the first-ever film studios being set up. Have a guess where you think they would be, without looking at the notes in front of you.

• 7:12Speaker 01

  I mean, you would imagine they're going to be LA, I guess.

• 7:16Speaker 00

  So they're in Melbourne, in Australia, interestingly. Yeah, I did not know that.

• 7:19Speaker 01

  Well, there's quite a big film industry in Melbourne, actually, even now, or in Australia at least.

• 7:24Speaker 00

  In London, we get the first Sherlock Holmes adventure, published in The Strand magazine. Also in London, we've got the general election. We have two elections taking place in this year, a little bit like this year, in fact, the year we're currently living in. We've got the British general election. And it's a conservative and liberal unionist coalition that loses its majority. And a liberal government comes in. So not a terribly dissimilar situation to the one that we find ourselves in now. And in the US, there's a presidential election. And this is really interesting. So Rover Cleveland comes back into office for a second term, but they're not back-to-back terms. And he's the only president thus far to serve two non-consecutive terms.

• 8:07Speaker 00

  Of course, Donald Trump would be the second if he is elected later this year. So there's a lot of parallels to our own time. It's a feeling of, in the 1890s, lots of change is happening. The recognizable 20th century is about to come into being. And this is the setting in which we find Lizzie Borden on trial for a series of very brutal murders.

• 8:31Speaker 01

  We have that context going on in the background. What's happening more specifically on the ground in Massachusetts? So this is where these murders unfold. So for me, if I think about Massachusetts, I think New England. I think relative, at this point in time, relatively well-to-do, quite industrial. And yet, with this very strong backbone of tradition and being very much part of the early colonies. But give us a little bit more detail.

• 8:59Speaker 00

  Sure. So we're in Fall River, Massachusetts, which is an East Coast city in Bristol County. It's a really wealthy place. It's very prosperous. And there's a lot of opportunity here for social mobility, which is going to be important to our story. I was just reading about Fall River in the 19th century. And something I came across, now I love a weird archaeological discovery. And It was famous in the time that Lizzie Borden was living there. This, this city was famous for a discovery that had actually happened several decades earlier in the 1830s of a skeleton that was found on the riverbank there, dressed in armour. It's buried with metal objects, some tree bark and some clothing that it's wearing

• 9:44Speaker 00

  and that's separate. And nobody could work out if this was the burial of a Native American or possibly an early colonist. It seemed to be already centuries old. And it sort of became the thing that the town was known for, which is just a lovely little detail. And maybe that's a whole episode in and of itself. But certainly by the 1890s, it is also really a centre for industry. So we've got print works, we've got, as we said, textile factories, we've also got ironworks, there's shipping, the river comes in there. So we've got, we've got shipping, transporting coal, transporting cotton. And there's a railroad that's now connecting Fall River to other towns and cities further inland. So this is a really exciting place.

• 10:26Speaker 00

  It's something that's changing very rapidly. And Lizzie's family are part of this new emerging prosperous upper middle class. And we're going to talk a little bit about who her family are. But first of all, I want you to describe the photograph that we have of the family home. And the thing that I want to say about this before you do that is that the house itself was in a fairly affluent part of Fall River, but it wasn't in the most affluent place, which was an area called The Hill, which was literally the houses on the hill that could look down on everyone else. And I want listeners to bear that in mind because that is going to become an important aspect of this story later on.

• 11:10Speaker 00

  But for now, Anthony, tell us what we're looking at in this picture.

• 11:13Speaker 01

  Right, so we're looking at a, in many ways, a typical well-to-do New England house from potentially the end of the 18th century, if not the beginning of the 19th. It is three stories high, ground floor, first floor and a top floor, which is, looks to be in the eaves essentially. There is a chimney jutting out of the top. It is surrounded by picket fences, all very idyllic, I suppose, in one sense, although it does very much look like it's in an urban or a suburban setting. There are low gates, windows down the side of the house as well. It looks like very traditional, almost 19th century church building, if I didn't know

• 11:56Speaker 01

  any better, but obviously this is domestic dwelling. Yeah, wood frame and it's clad and it's got a very nice door over it, but it looks very respectable. As you say, not a mansion, but certainly a respectable house. Nothing bizarrely unusual about it, I suppose, is, it's worth saying. It seems like a very run-of-the-mill domestic setting in many ways.

• 12:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, it absolutely is. It's just that it's, it's an affluent middle-class home in an affluent middle-class city in a part of America that is changing shape in terms of the wealth, in terms of the industry. But there's nothing out of the ordinary here. So let's go inside. And if we were to walk into this house, we would meet, first of all, Andrew Jackson Borden, this is the father of the household. He is born in 1822. He's of English and Welsh descent. And interestingly, and this speaks very much to the times, he grew up in poverty, but by the time we meet him as a grown man and as father to the notorious Lizzie Borden, he is a property developer.

• 13:00Speaker 00

  He's also the director of several textile mills in the city and he is importantly, president of the Union Savings Bank. His estimated worth in 1892 is $300,000, which is about $10 million in 2024. So this is very much a self-made man. This is the American dream in action here. Next, we have Lizzie's stepmother. This is a woman called Abby Borden. She is born in 1828, so she's just a little bit younger than Andrew. And she has a polite, amicable relationship with her stepdaughter, Lizzie, but there's

• 13:45Speaker 00

  no warmth there. It's quite a distant relationship and there is a little bit of tension. There's this idea that Lizzie and her sister that I'll talk about in a minute have, that Abby has married their father, Andrew, for his money. So money is an issue, this family. Andrew obviously protects his wealth and covets more and more, possibly because of the background that he's come from. And Abby is seen as someone who's maybe taken advantage of that. Next, we have Lizzie's sister called Emma Borden. She's born in 1851. She's the older sister and she's incredibly religious. So she teaches at the local Sunday school.

• 14:30Speaker 00

  She's a treasurer for the Christian Endeavour Society and a member of the Women's Christian Temperance Movement. I'm not going to lie, she doesn't sound like wildly good fun, but her and Lizzie have a relatively close relationship. And certainly in the context of Fall River in the 1890s, they are respectable women. They are participating in their respectable Christian community. Also living in the household, we have one servant, Bridget Sullivan, who is an immigrant to the US from Ireland. And although she's called Bridget, the family call her Maggie, so we will be calling her Maggie from now on.

• 15:12Speaker 00

  She's 25 years old and as far as I could tell trying to read up on this case, she's been with the family for a relatively long time. So she's very familiar with everyone who she's employed by and has an existing relationship with the two girls, Lizzie and Emma.

• 15:29Speaker 01

  What's interesting about discovering a little bit more now about the family is that it sounds to me like Andrew, the dad, is in a position to actually be living better than they are. Not that there's anything wrong with how they're living, but if he's worth $10 million in today's money and this house is nowhere near, he's not at the end of his means by any stretch at all. So i- in a way, he outwardly at least appears to be living quite frugally. Does that translate within the household structure itself? Or is he spending, often with these cases, you see people are spending money frivolously and therefore that's putting tension in the house. But Molly, I understand that's not the case in this particular murder case.

• 16:11Speaker 00

  You're absolutely correct. It is the other way around. He's, he's strangely frugal. He doesn't like to spend money. And even though the area that they live in has these quite well-to-do homes and their home, at least on the outside, looks very respectable, inside there is no indoor plumbing and there are no luxuries compared to the domestic setups of the people around them. So he's someone who has built up this wealth, but doesn't necessarily like to spend it. One thing that he does do, which seems to create some tension amongst the family members is that he, as we said, he's a landlord in the city and he owns lots and lots of properties that he rents out mostly to people working in the factories.

• 16:52Speaker 00

  He actually gifts some of these properties to members of Abby's family, the stepmother's family. And there's some tension there maybe between the daughters and their stepmother in that their inheritance seems to be being diluted and given away to this, this new side of the family that's married into the wealth. So there's already some problems and those are not the only issues. So we know, for example, that even though they all live under the same roof, Andrew eats separately with his wife and his two daughters, who, let's not forget, are grown adults themselves, don't eat at the table with them, which is potentially a little bit odd. I can understand maybe children not eating with their parents in this period, and certainly

• 17:37Speaker 00

  that would be the case earlier on for wealthier families. It feels a bit strange not to do that with adult daughters. The other thing to say is that he has some quite strange behaviours. So in the months before these murders take place, and we're going to get into them in a little bit, Andrew decides to go outside to the yard at the back of the house where Lizzie has built a wooden roost for some pigeons that she is just keeping as pets. And he takes a hatchet to the roost, he chops it up and he actually kills the pigeons that are in it. Unclear why, but of course, Lizzie is very, very, very upset by this.

• 18:22Speaker 00

  So there's a sort of strange, strange violence in the household, actually. And I suppose from this distance and perspective, we could maybe speculate that Andrew is someone who likes to be in control of his money, of his domestic setup, of the women who live in his household. So that's something to bear in mind. This tension only increases in the early 1890s and Emma and Lizzie go away from the house on extended trips. They travel quite far sometimes, but actually often they are staying in Fall River itself, in other properties, in hotels, they're renting rooms out there, trying to get out of the, that domestic setup that they have with their father.

• 19:04Speaker 00

  And this becomes a routine thing for them, which again, may be raising a bit of a red flag. There are some other people to consider before we get on to the crimes that are about to be committed in this house. A few days before the murders take place, Lizzie and Emma's maternal uncle, so this is the brother of their mother, who is dead and not in the picture anymore, their maternal uncle, a man called John Vineker Morse, visits Andrew, so his ex brother-in-law, to discuss the sale of the house that his sister used to live in. I think when she had the children. This is many years ago now. This seems to be the source of an argument between the men because

• 19:48Speaker 00

  from what I can gather, Morse wants that property back. His sister lived there. His nieces possibly grew up there. And he feels that he and his family have a claim on it that Andrew does not. So there is an argument. And then Morse leaves. This is a few days before the murders. Now, around the same time as this, something else happens, which is highly suspect. And that is that every single member of the family living in that house starts to become violently ill. They have stomach cramps, they're throwing up, they're very, very unwell. And a family friend later speculates that it's because of some gone-off mutton

• 20:30Speaker 00

  that's been left on the stove for too long and they've just given themselves food poisoning. But in the days leading up to the murders, Abby, the stepmother, is overheard saying that she thinks she's been poisoned. And the reason why she says this is because Andrew, the father, as we say, he's a landlord, he's involved in the bank, he's involved in the factories, he's a deeply unpopular figure in a town where the wealth and social divide is, I think it's fair to say, deepening in a lot of ways. And she is worried that someone external to the household is actually trying to assassinate them.

• 21:16Speaker 01

  Terry Cottle died by suicide, but his heart lived on, transplanted into Sonny Graham. Years later, Sonny died the exact same way, same heart, same fate. But that wasn't the strangest connection between them. Sonny also married Terry's widow. Hosted by Karen Kilgariff, this is Heart, an Apple original podcast produced by Plan B and Blanchard House. New episodes are available Mondays and Apple TV subscribers get special early access to the entire season. Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts.

• 21:57Speaker 02

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• 22:39Speaker 03

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• 23:46Speaker 03

  So we're in this middle class, if not upper middle class neighborhood. There is an air of respectability, but there are some tensions boiling beneath the surface, tensions without the house of how popular Andrew may or may not be, and then tensions within the house. And it's around this point that I think those tensions start to boil over.

• 24:09Speaker 00

  On the morning of Thursday, the 4th of August, 1892, everything seemed normal in the Borden household. Lizzie and Emma's uncle Morse, who had slept there the night before, rose from the guest bedroom and went downstairs to breakfast with Andrew Borden and his wife Abby. Maggie, the maid, served the family as usual. After they finished eating, Andrew and Morse continued to chat, while Abby, conscious of the used bedroom upstairs, went up to clean it. At 8:48 a.m., Morse left the house, heading out to visit Emma, Lizzie's sister, in Fall River.

• 24:55Speaker 00

  Fifteen minutes or so later, Andrew followed him out the door, heading into the street for his morning walk. When Andrew returned at around 10:30, the door to his home was locked. He tried the key, but it did not budge, as though the whole thing had been jammed shut. He called for assistance and from within Maggie appeared to help him. She would later describe hearing Lizzie laugh at the scene from the top of the stairs, something Lizzie herself would deny. Maggie helped her master to remove his boots and fetched his slippers,

• 25:39Speaker 00

  watching him retire to the parlor. He was tired, they all were. The mysterious sickness that had struck them down in the days before had taken their energy. Andrew fell asleep on the couch. Maggie, seizing the opportunity, retired to her own room now, climbing the stairs to the attic and lying down on her bed there. Her eyes slowly closed. The peace would not last. At 11:10, Maggie awoke to hear Lizzie shouting downstairs. "Come quick, father's dead, somebody's come in and killed him." The next few moments were chaos.

• 26:24Speaker 00

  Across the street, the family's doctor, Dr. Seabury Bowen, heard the screaming and rushed medical bag in hand to the scene. What he saw next, he would later recount in court.

• 26:39Speaker 01

  I saw the form of Mr. Borden lying on the lounge at the left of the sitting room door. His face was very badly cut, apparently with a sharp instrument. His face was covered with blood. I felt his pulse and satisfied myself he was dead. Glanced about the room and saw there was nothing disturbed, neither the furniture nor anything at all. Mr. Borden was lying with his face toward the south on his right side and apparently at ease, as if asleep. His face was hardly to be recognized by one who knew him. I made no other examination at the time except to feel his pulse. Miss Lizzie had followed me partway through the dining room. And as I went back to the kitchen, I asked her if she had seen anyone.

• 27:25Speaker 01

  She said, "I have not." Then I asked her, "Where have you been?" She replied, "In the barn, looking for some iron." She said she was afraid her father had had trouble with the tenants and she had overheard loud conversations several times recently. I asked for a sheet to cover up Mr. Borden, Bridget brought me one. Then Miss Lizzie asked me to telegraph to her sister Emma, and I went to the telegraph office. Nothing had been said about Mrs. Borden until now. But before I went to send the telegram, the question was asked, "Where is Mrs. Borden?" And the answer, from Miss Lizzie, I think, but I am not certain, was that Mrs. Borden had received a note that morning to visit a sick friend and had gone out.

• 28:11Speaker 01

  On leaving the house, I met Officer Allen. On my return from the telegraph office, I met Mrs. Churchill, who said, "They have found Mrs. Borden." I asked where, and she replied, "Upstairs, in the front room." I went up the front stairs and stopped a moment at the door of the guest room. At that point, I looked over the bed and saw the prostrate form of Mrs. Borden. I was standing directly in the door. I went round to the front of the bed and placed my hand on her head. I found there were wounds. Then I felt her pulse. She was dead.

• 28:51Speaker 00

  Quite the scene. I love the detail that Lizzie stepped outside to get iron. Like, what?

• 29:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, what the hell is that?

• 29:01Speaker 00

  Terrible alibi. Um, okay, so we, we know from the medical report that follows that Mrs. Borden, Abby Borden, probably died first around 10:30 in the morning. And that Andrew, the father, died at around 11. So he was killed afterwards. And we also know that each of them was bludgeoned and hacked with some kind of axe or a hatchet. The other thing that's really important to say is that unlike Andrew, who was possibly still asleep on the couch when he was killed, when that first blow landed, Abby upstairs, Mrs. Borden,

• 29:45Speaker 00

  was thought to be facing her attacker, indicating perhaps that she knew them, that she was speaking face to face with them when she was first hit. And that she falls then face first on the floor where she is the victim of a more sustained attack. So it's very, very brutal. It's very intimate in this family space. And we know from the testimonies of different people, including the people inside the house who are not dead, Lizzie and Maggie, the servant, that Maggie is upstairs on her bed. And Lizzie is supposedly in the yard. She, at some point, according to Maggie, might be at the top of the stairs.

• 30:28Speaker 00

  She is the one, however, it's important to remember that raises the alarm. She's the one that calls Maggie from the bedroom and says, somebody's come in, father's dead. And none of them seem to realise that Abby is dead upstairs. Two, and the last detail that I think we need to take from this is that when the doctor comes into the household and asks where Abby is, it's Lizzie who says, she's not here, she's gone out.

• 30:54Speaker 01

  For me, and there must be some other theories that are, we're about to meet with here. But for me, it seems really plain where the suspicion would be directed. It doesn't scream at all of innocence to me that Lizzie is the first person to discover, let's say, her father. You know, I can imagine the thinking being that, oh, well, if I discover him, you know, I've raised the alarm. But mind you, at the same time, there's no account here of Lizzie being covered in blood. And surely she would have had to have been covered in blood if these attacks were as brutal as they've been described.

• 31:26Speaker 00

  Yes, that is a really crucial detail and we will get to that. Before we shine the light on Lizzie, because I think, I agree, she is the obvious suspect. I think we need to run through some of the theories that are put forward by the police at this early stage. Because let's remember, Lizzie is the daughter of a now middle class banker landlord, factory owner. She's a respectable woman and she's never going to be their first port of call. So they have to exhaust all the other avenues first. So the most obvious, I suppose, is that there might be an intruder. And initially, and I think this is sadly predictable for this period, or indeed most of history,

• 32:10Speaker 00

  that the authorities begin to look beyond the household itself at the poorest and the most marginalised in the community. So they round up people living on the streets, they round up known criminals. And they even look at lots of Andrew's tenants across the city. Remember, you know, just a call back to Abby's fear that maybe someone renting off them and disgruntled in some way had poisoned them. And Maggie absolutely repeats that information to the police. So it, it seems like that might be, at least initially, a viable threat.

• 32:45Speaker 01

  And there is this huge fear at the time of crossing the threshold of, of an outsider crossing your domestic threshold. The domestic threshold having become more precious than it ever was before. And this intimate space being violated is seen as one of the most violent acts that can occur. And it's always seen that people from the lower classes can intrude into these more polite spaces. So that would be a very, very trope-y trope, if that makes sense. So yeah, I'm, I'm not surprised that that comes up as a, a theory. It's an interesting one, but I don't see any proof of it anywhere. But yeah, anyone else? Who else did, did they turn their attention towards?

• 33:25Speaker 00

  So the attention then turns to the family. If it wasn't someone from outside. And I agree that that it's a sort of obvious fear in that time period, right? Especially when, I suppose, when people are earning huge amounts of money or making huge wealth off industry. And there's a sense of, you know, their property being the most valuable. And you don't want anyone to try and come and take it or violate it in any way. So you can see why that's the initial claim. But yes, there is attention turned to the family themselves, the more intimate acquaintances of Andrew and Abby who are dead. One thing police do find in an initial search of the house is the hatchet.

• 34:06Speaker 00

  It's in the basement. Now, this is probably the hatchet that was used by Andrew to break up the roost, the coop for the pigeons in the yard. So, you know, we, we know it's in use in the household anyway. It would have been used to chop firewood, possibly for protection, but it's more a household tool than a weapon necessarily. But it is found in the basement and the wooden handle has been broken clean off as though the person using it last wielded it with enormous force, which is pretty, pretty chilling.

• 34:41Speaker 01

  Well, we know that Andrew did, do we? Is the hatchet covered in blood? Is that how we know? Or is it just assumed that this is the hatchet? Because Andrew had used that with force against the chicken coop. That sounds like it was a pretty maniacal action on his behalf.

• 34:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, and he kills the pigeons. So even if there was blood on there, that could be the blood of an animal, very, very easily. The other suspect that comes up is the uncle, Uncle Morse, who had been obviously staying the night before in the house, but had been witnessed leaving that morning and had been going off to meet the sister Emma, who was staying elsewhere. We don't know if she's staying away because of a recent argument with the family. Maybe it's because everyone else in the household got ill and she didn't, and she wanted to remove herself. Maybe she's visiting friends. It's quite unclear. But she's also held up briefly as a suspect, although she seems to have alibi. There's one other person that I want to mention really briefly here. And this isn't a theory that I spent particularly long looking into, but it's worth mentioning

• 35:39Speaker 00

  that there is a possibility that Andrew had an illegitimate son from a different, a completely separate relationship. And there is some speculation that this illegitimate son wanted financial recognition from his father. And that that was a source of argument.

• 35:59Speaker 01

  It's too neat, isn't it? It's too neat a theory. It feels more, it feels more fiction than it does reality.

• 36:05Speaker 00

  I was just going to say that, yeah, it feels like it would be on the stage in the 19th century. That's like a theatrical plot. But pretty soon, the authorities have no choice but to turn to Lizzie as the suspect. And interestingly, they don't necessarily turn to Maggie in the same way, which I find very interesting. And not necessarily how you would expect it to play out. Though Lizzie claims to have been in the yard outside the house the whole time. But what strikes Maggie about that initial moment when Lizzie raises the alarm and shouts for her to come is that actually when she stood over the body of her father and later when they discover Abby dead upstairs, Lizzie's quite cold and actually almost a little bit curious about the injuries.

• 36:49Speaker 00

  And she doesn't seem particularly hysterical or disturbed by what they're looking at. Of course, we might today contribute that to being that she's in shock. If anyone's ever been in shock, they'll know that your body kind of shuts down to a certain extent. And you don't necessarily behave in a way that you would be able to predict. Crucially though, because of her social standing and because it's her father who is dead, the police don't really search her and they also don't search her bedroom. She says, when the police arrive, that she's feeling unwell, that she's so shocked by everything that she needs to lie down. And so the policemen in the house do a very cursory, you know, head around the door, just checking that there aren't blood splatters up the wall.

• 37:34Speaker 00

  And they don't look at anything beyond that, which of course is, we would consider now to be hugely remiss. But they think that she is a vulnerable young woman. She's had a great loss. She needs to rest and recuperate. That is then coupled with the fact that when she's questioned by the police, she acts in a way that's actually quite snobbish and she really draws on those social distinctions.

• 38:01Speaker 01

  Who is this? Lizzie now is snobbish?

• 38:03Speaker 00

  This is Lizzie, yeah. And something to remember about the police force in America generally in this period, but specifically in Fall River, is that they're made up almost primarily of immigrants, specifically Irish immigrants. Which I suppose you could say potentially that's why they don't necessarily leap to the idea that Maggie might have done it. Maybe there's some solidarity there, or maybe there's simply not the prejudice that police, who didn't have that background, wouldn't have brought to it. But when they interview Lizzie, she absolutely leans in to her social superiority.

• 38:40Speaker 00

  She acts in a way that's very stoical, very cold, very calm. She's very clear and precise in the information she gives them, but it does not take long for that to start breaking down and little mistakes in her testimony start to creep in. So she claims, for example, that Maggie was the one who handed her a note from Abby, her stepmother, saying Abby was going out to visit a sick friend. But when Maggie's asked by the police about this, she says that there never was a note like that. So it's not looking great for Lizzie already.

• 39:17Speaker 01

  And that's where this testimony comes from, the doctor, where he said Lizzie had said that Abby was gone out. So this is potentially... Now, look, let's give her the benefit of the doubt. You know, we said Maggie was escaping a lot of attention here. Maybe Maggie had got the note and is now denying it. But there is another crucial piece of evidence that comes next that is quite damning for Lizzie, right?

• 39:40Speaker 00

  Two pieces of really crucial evidence. The first of these is that, and this seems totally wild to me, Lizzie has tried to buy poison the day before from the local druggist. When the police find this out, of course, they ask her about it. And she claims that she wanted to use the poison to clean a fur coat. But even by 19th century standards, this wasn't really a method that anyone used. And Maggie certainly has never heard of this. Also, it would most likely have been Maggie's job to clean the clothes, not Lizzie herself. So it's very, very odd behaviour if this is true.

• 40:19Speaker 01

  And so she's tried to buy this poison the day before, but wasn't it the day before that the family were, according to Abby, that she felt the family had all been potentially poisoned as well?

• 40:30Speaker 00

  It's in the days, multiple days, leading up to the deaths, that they're unwell. But I suppose there's a moment of doubt that's introduced there into the minds of the police investigating this, that if Lizzie was trying to buy poison the day before, had she succeeded on other days? Had she already dosed those people? Was she giving them something that was already available in the household? I'm thinking, you know, something like rat poison, that kind of thing.

• 40:57Speaker 01

  It's definitely where my mind is going with this, yeah.

• 41:00Speaker 00

  Uh huh, yeah. So is it actually that she, that Lizzie has already tried to kill her family in the days leading to this, these more brutal physical murders? The next completely damning thing that happens is that two days after the killings, the police, of course, have taken the bodies away from the house now, but Lizzie's still here in the house with Maggie. She has nowhere else to go, really. This is her home. And neighbours that are well meaning keep popping in to check how she's doing. And I suppose they're curious as well. They want to see the crime scene. News of this has already spread all over Fall River, and very soon it's going to become an incredibly famous case across America.

• 41:41Speaker 00

  One of these neighbours comes into the house and she finds Lizzie in the kitchen, tearing up a dress and putting the ripped parts of it into the fire in the stove. And of course, the neighbour says to Lizzie, what's that? What are you doing? And what's all that red stuff on the dress?

• 42:02Speaker 02

  Blood donation is now more inclusive. More LGBTQ plus individuals are able to donate blood with the American Red Cross due to FDA guidelines that eliminate eligibility questions based on sexual orientation. The Red Cross celebrates this historic change and welcomes those who may be newly eligible to donate blood. There's a place for everyone in the mission of the Red Cross, including you. The Red Cross is committed to achieving a blood donation process that treats all potential donors with equality and respect while maintaining the safety of the blood supply. Join us and help save lives. To learn more and make your appointment to donate blood, visit redcrossblood.org/lgbtq. That's redcrossblood.org/lgbtq.

• 42:45Speaker 03

  Hi there, I'm Dan, host of Dan Snow's History Podcast. And I can imagine on these dark winter nights, all you're going to do is curl up with a cup of tea and get lost in an amazing story. Well, I can help you with that. Twice a week, I tell you the most dramatic and extraordinary stories from history with details I can guarantee you've never heard before. Feel the frostbite of that grisly failed American invasion of Canada in the dead of winter. Imagine every clash and blow at the Battle of Bosworth. Follow Eleanor of Accretain, one of the most powerful women in the medieval world, as she goes on crusade to the Holy Land with 300 handmaidens in tow.

• 43:24Speaker 04

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• 43:27Speaker 03

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• 43:34Speaker 03

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• 43:45Speaker 00

  And Lizzie says, oh, no, no, no, don't mind this. I was wearing this dress and I brushed against some wet paint and it's not washing out, so I'm just getting rid of it. And I'm going to burn it.

• 43:58Speaker 01

  So for this to add up then, if this is a clue, and it appears to be, what would have had to happen is that Lizzie is wearing these clothes that she's now trying to rip up when she kills Abby and then her father, because Maggie's asleep, she then takes time to go and change into another outfit, so therefore she's not covered in blood. And then she raises the alarm, and she's hidden these clothes somewhere in the meantime, the ones she was wearing when she committed the murder, this would be the theory. And now she's going back to try and destroy that evidence. And as you say, they haven't checked her room, they haven't searched her room at this point. So I guess this certainly could add up, right?

• 44:38Speaker 00

  The only thing that I find strange about it is that, so we have the dress that is covered, Lizzie says, if we take her at face value, in red paint, that she's brushed up against something, with, of course, the suspect that it's blood, but we don't know that. But she's destroying the evidence. Now, another thing that the police find in the days afterwards, when they come back to the house and comb through it again, is a bucket of rags that's been left in the cellar. These are torn pieces of material and they are covered in blood. Now, when they find these, of course, they think these are the rags that have helped clean up the crime scene, clean up the murderer. And so they assume that they're Lizzie's. She says, no, no, no, these are the rags that I use

• 45:20Speaker 00

  when I'm on my period, you know, they're covered in menstrual blood. And the family doctor confirms that she is on her period. On the surface, we've got the dress covered in blood and some rags covered in blood, hidden in the same place, don't forget, in the basement where the hatchet, the broken hatchet is. But to me, those are the actions of two very different people. If Lizzie is destroying evidence on her dress, why would she leave a bucket of bloody rags in the basement? And why would she have used multiple sheets of fabric to clean herself, to clean the crime scene? You know, we know that obviously in the 19th century, there weren't the same sanitary products available that there are today. And women did use rags in their undergarments as a way to clean themselves, you know,

• 46:03Speaker 00

  to put inside their underwear. Is that really what this bucket of rags is? And of course, because, I mean, we've seen this in multiple cases, actually. I'm thinking back to, was it the Sarah Malcolm case in the early 18th century that we saw? That was exactly the same defence. When people found rags covered in blood, Sarah Malcolm in that, in that instance says, oh, no, no, no, that's just my period, it's menstrual blood. And we see it again and again. And the effect on the men, it's always men who are doing the prosecution, is often to take a step back and say, oh, okay, don't want to know anything about that, thanks, but we won't take that any further. That's your private business. That's ladies' business, nothing to do with us. And women in the cases that we've looked at so far

• 46:48Speaker 00

  have sometimes used that. I mean, it's ambiguous, but I think they have used it almost as a way to evade punishment, to escape being prosecuted. But in the case of Lizzie, I don't know. She could still be cleaning the blood of her father off her dress, but those rags could be her period blood.

• 47:06Speaker 01

  That's my instinct. I think the dress is something. I think the rags are nothing got to do with this case. Because as you say, why would she leave them there? It doesn't really add up. And then for the doctor to confirm that she is having her period, then that to me seems like it's not really worth following up, because they're not going to be able to prove anything about that blood, regardless of whose it is, given the context of the time that this is happening in. And the fact that, as you say, the rags, rather than, you know, a swathe of material that was used to clean up. But also, I mean, how bloody were the crime scenes? Was there a clean up job done? Like, that would have been relatively obvious, I would have thought. So it appears to me that these will have

• 47:48Speaker 01

  been what she says they are. And that's possibly why the police don't pursue it any further.

• 47:54Speaker 00

  Well, they are about to pursue it further. She is going to be arrested. So on August 11th, several days after the murders, she, Lizzie, is arrested for murder. Although it will take, I think, a year, almost a year, for the trial to come to fruition. What's so interesting in this initial moment of the arrest is that opinion about whether or not Lizzie did it is absolutely split. It splits the city into two camps. On the one hand, we've got people who think she did it. And interestingly, most of the people who fall into that camp are factory workers, are people in the lower and working classes, who see her and her father and everything that she stands for as their natural enemy.

• 48:38Speaker 00

  And on the other hand, we've got the people who believe that she's innocent. And among those are the church groups that her and her sister were part of. And interestingly, suffragist societies, societies for the advancement and equality of women rally to support her. And so by the time it gets to trial, the case is already this notorious thing, but we're really no closer to knowing whether or not she did it. And it's that ambiguity that people cannot get enough of.

• 49:13Speaker 00

  By the first day of Lizzie Borden's trial for murder, interest in the case was booming. Newspaper presses ran hot with copy, reporting on events and speculating not only on motive, but on the outcome of the courtroom. And crowds, notable for the high numbers of women among them, blocked to see the drama unfold. The Daily Herald, June 9th, 1893.

• 49:41Speaker 01

  It was just 11 o'clock when a closed carriage drew up to the rear of the courthouse. A deputy sheriff stepped out of it and handed out his hand to assist Lizzie Borden. The crowd pressed forward in a sort of frenzy to catch a glimpse of the woman, but she slipped quietly into the building before they were able to do so, and walked quietly to her place in the prisoner's dock.

• 50:04Speaker 00

  The Washington Bee, June 10th.

• 50:06Speaker 01

  The theory of the prosecution is that Lizzie Borden was on bad terms with her mother-in-law, and that this enmity with her knowledge that her father intended to change his will to favour Mrs. Borden, incited her to the double murder.

• 50:22Speaker 00

  The case against Lizzie was compelling, especially when a neighbour, the same that had caught her ripping and burning her dress, swore before the jury that Lizzie had said to her the day before the murders that she would soon be going on vacation, and felt that something is hanging over me, I cannot tell what it is. And yet, opinion over Lizzie's guilt was divided. In one remarkable and callous moment of the trial, the skulls of Andrew and Abby Borden, now stripped of their flesh and used as evidence, were brought into the courtroom.

• 51:04Speaker 00

  A ripple of shock and sympathy ran through the crowd when, confronted with the bones, Lizzie fainted. On June 20th, the all-male jury stepped out to deliberate. They took just an hour and a half to reach their conclusion: Lizzie Borden was not guilty.

• 51:30Speaker 01

  Do you know what? I did not know the outcome of this case. That's the first time that I'm... And I know it exists in folklore, and there's been movies and there's been all kinds of comics and stuff, but that is not... I didn't know what the verdict was. And I am surprised, it has to be said, but we'll come to that in a second. That image of the heads being brought out into the courtroom, that's pretty incredible. If I were being sceptical, and I always am, it's very easy to feign fainting.

• 51:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. Now, there's ambiguity around this moment. There are some reports that say that these were models of the skulls of victims. Other people in other places have claimed these were the skulls. But either way, you know, these are the skulls of people who've been, let's not forget, without putting too fine a point on it, hacked to death with a hatchet. And Lizzie's fainting, is that the reaction of an innocent daughter slash stepdaughter seeing the reality of what had been done to her loved ones? Is it the reaction of someone who committed those murders and is now having to relive that? Or are those the actions of someone who did do the killings and is trying to act

• 52:44Speaker 00

  as she believes an innocent person would do? The other thing to say, I think, about the court case and why she gets off is because of the all-male jury, and she absolutely, whether she's guilty or innocent, she plays them. She turns up every day for court with a fresh bouquet of flowers. We famously know that flowers in the 19th century have their own language. You can make bouquets and gift them. It's part of a courtship ritual that people do, you know, and these different flowers have different meanings, different ideas that they symbolise. And the newspapers every single day clamour to see what flowers she's brought in and try and decode them. It's sort of quite Taylor Swift-esque, minus the murder, of course.

• 53:27Speaker 00

  But that thing of hiding messages and giving something to your public to decode, and that they'll become obsessed with. And interestingly, the newspapers every day report completely different flowers, so obviously a lot of these newspaper men have no idea what they're looking at and are just making it up, you know. One man's white rose will be another man's peony, like, they don't have a clue. But she does that, and she also wears these really ornate brooches at her throat to draw attention up to her face, whilst wearing entirely black mourning clothes. And this is a year on from the deaths of her family. This is someone who either has an unbelievable instinct for PR and how to play it,

• 54:09Speaker 00

  or she is being coached really well by the team around her defence.

• 54:13Speaker 01

  I suppose regardless of whatever tactics she's using, they work, right? Because she's found innocent, and shocked and all as I might be by that, even at the insinuation that she was manipulating the jury potentially, she now has to go on and live her life, and she has to live out the rest of her life. And, look, it's the late 19th century. If we know anything about the late 19th century, it's that reputation is everything. But then we did have the suffragists coming out in support of her during the trial. So is she now heralded as this hero, or is her reputation destroyed?

• 54:44Speaker 00

  Her reputation is largely destroyed because of the way that she gives evidence in court, because of the way that her private life is laid bare. She's seen as a bit of a pariah, really. And interestingly, she doesn't leave the city, she doesn't leave Full River. Her and her sister actually sell up the house where the murders happened, which, you know, you can understand. And they buy, with all the money they even inherited from their father, a big house on the hill. The hill being the desirable part, the most desirable part of the city where the wealthiest live. And so, it's such a fascinating thing that she ends up

• 55:26Speaker 00

  quite literally on top of this city, living with its wealthiest, looking down on everyone else, using the money that her dead father has left her, that's come to her through his death, when potentially she took his life.

• 55:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's suspicious as well, right? Because what it highlights is the fact that Abby had to be killed in this scenario in order for the sisters to get the money.

• 55:50Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 55:50Speaker 01

  Just the father dying is totally pointless, because then the money's going to Abby. So... And the fact that Abby is killed first, according to the forensics at the time, doesn't look great.

• 56:00Speaker 00

  Yeah. There's an interesting question, I suppose, about Lizzie's sister Emma as well, who, we know she's not in the house at the time of the murders, she's been staying elsewhere, and their uncle, Uncle Morse, does go to find her later on in the day. But they do live together afterwards. And I suppose there's maybe a case to be made that they did the murders together in some way. But interestingly, after the trials died down and Lizzie's got her newfound freedom and they've bought the house on the hill, Lizzie takes up what historians have called a very close friendship with an actress, question mark over the nature of that relationship, certainly. And this actress moves into the house, and it actually leads to a breakdown in the relationship between Lizzie and her sister Emma.

• 56:44Speaker 00

  And so there's some fascinating dynamics going on there. There's some possible queerness. There's this family intimacy that's interrupted by another person. And I'm so fascinated by the fact that Lizzie is drawn to an actress, no matter the relationship status. That for someone who's put on quite the performance herself, that is so tantalising. But of course, she lives on for a very long time in pop culture, and she's, you know, she's everywhere. As you mentioned, Anthony, she's in comics, she's in film, she's in TV. Interestingly, she's written sometimes this sort of murdering psychopath, but she's often a kind of feminist hero as well.

• 57:22Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 57:22Speaker 00

  Which I find interesting. And I love that on TV she's played, in one particular production, by Christina Ricci, the absolute queen of 90s Gothic.

• 57:32Speaker 01

  Yes, we love Christina.

• 57:33Speaker 00

  Which I just love. And I'm going to leave you with two thoughts on this ambiguous case. The first is a nursery rhyme that has come down to us. And I think it probably does date from the 19th century in the moment of the trial, and it is this. Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks. And when she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty one. I love it. Catchy.

• 58:04Speaker 01

  Hmm. I do like it. Actually, I think I've heard that on like some TV thing or something before.

• 58:09Speaker 00

  Oh, definitely. You will have done. You will have done. Now, the other thing that I want to say to you, and I want your opinion on this. So the Borden House, where the murders take place, it still exists. And it is now a B and B.

• 58:24Speaker 01

  Oh, my God, please, can we go?

• 58:26Speaker 00

  You can stay there. The rooms are named after all the members of the family and some of the police who investigated.

• 58:33Speaker 01

  I don't necessarily love that now. I don't necessarily love that. Okay. Let the record show that that's a bit weird.

• 58:40Speaker 00

  It does feel kind of voyeuristic, doesn't it? And it's a sort of house museum slash B and B. Would you stay there?

• 58:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:48Speaker 00

  Really?

• 58:49Speaker 01

  Oh, God, yeah. In a heartbeat. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I wouldn't need, I wouldn't need to question it. Yeah, no, I absolutely would. I'd, I'd stay there right now if somebody came and took me. The, the naming of the rooms after the people, hmm, little bit close to the bone and.

• 59:00Speaker 00

  Because you can even stay in Abby's room where she was hacked to death on the floor. I mean, it's not the most tasteful.

• 59:06Speaker 01

  No, it's not the most tasteful, but I suppose there are some people that would argue that this episode of this podcast is not the most tasteful. Like, why are we still going on about this? What does it serve? That it's just the glorification of a woman being murdered? That it's the women's reproductive cycles are coming into the frame in criminal trials. You're linking femininity with criminality. True crime is gory. Why do we come to these things with such interest? I just think it's a continuation of that. Like, where do we draw that line? You know what I mean? For me, one of the most tantalizing things about any historical experience is the space in which things, big things, life-changing things, life-ending things happen. And there's something otherworldly that happens in those spaces even today.

• 59:51Speaker 01

  So for me, the chance to experience what that space still feels like and the communication within those spaces would be utterly fascinating. I think it brings you a little bit closer to that history. Why do we want to go closer to that history? Well, I think anybody listening to this, or anybody who's watched the Lizzie Borden TV drama, or anybody who's read a true crime book ever in their lives can't kind of ask that question. Because you're all doing it too. We're all doing it too. So I think sometimes we get a little bit squeamish about this true criminous. But it's what ultimately it boils down to is that human beings are inquisitive about going to the edges of what's acceptable. And to get as close to those edges without it ever affecting them as you possibly can.

• 1:00:29Speaker 01

  And to be in that space would be truly, truly remarkable. Grim, yes. Haunting, yes. Sad, I'm sure. But all of that history, all of those lives, all of those stories contained in this one particular space, I'd have to go.

• 1:00:44Speaker 00

  Do you think Lizzie did it?

• 1:00:46Speaker 01

  Um, it's tricky because I, I came into this thinking she'd been found guilty potentially. That's how I knew. Because she's so famous or infamous, I was like, well, she, she obviously was found guilty. But of course she becomes more infamous because she's not. Do I think she did it? Yes. Now, does her sister and uncle know a little bit more than potentially we think? Possibly, I think. I wouldn't rule that out. Particularly because that's who seems to coalesce around her in the immediacy of the discovery of the bodies. And that's interesting in itself. The fact that the uncle is in the house within 24 hours, within, within two hours of this happening is, is interesting.

• 1:01:25Speaker 01

  The fact that the sister is entirely away is also interesting. But yeah, I, I think she definitely played a part, if not totally on her own. What do you think?

• 1:01:36Speaker 00

  I think she probably did. But I think for me, what this case gives us. And I suppose it links to what you're saying about being in that space today. If you were to go as a visitor to the B and B. It takes you inside a late 19th century, middle-class home in a way that, you know, this is not a home that was unusual across America in this period, or indeed across Britain. But it takes you inside that home and plonks you right down in amongst these complicated, interhuman relationships. This is, again, non-extrordinary family, but one filled with real people, with real fears and aspirations and resentments.

• 1:02:16Speaker 00

  And it allows us into the broader context in which they live, but also into their minds, into their inner workings and into the acts that they do and do not commit within that space. And I think that's fascinating. And I think that's what After Dark does for us so much is that we get to go into these spaces throughout history and to think about the way that they're set up, the hierarchies, the power balances that exist within them. And then what happens when that's all turned on its head or disrupted in some way and chaos ensues? And it can tell us so much about the moments of history that that's taking place in. And I suppose something wider about how human beings react in these scenarios.

• 1:03:02Speaker 01

  Well, so many of you have requested this episode, and I can see why, because there is so much to think with here. But as a result, I now want to know what you think about this. Let us know on our socials or write in to us at [email protected]. Did Lizzie Borden commit these murders? And we do love hearing from you. So if you have any suggestions for episodes, let us know there too. That's the best place to contact us for any episode suggestions. Follow us, obviously, wherever you get your podcasts. Tell your friends about us and how great we are. And please leave us a five-star review because it helps other people discover the podcast as well. And if you've enjoyed our exploration of American history in this episode, then don't forget that History Hit has an entire podcast dedicated to American history.

• 1:03:45Speaker 01

  It's called American History Hit, and it's hosted by Don Wildman. So go and check that out now, and we'll see you next time back on After Dark.

• 1:04:01Speaker 02

  Blood donation is now more inclusive. More LGBTQ plus individuals are able to donate blood with the American Red Cross due to FDA guidelines that eliminate eligibility questions based on sexual orientation. The Red Cross celebrates this historic change and welcomes those who may be newly eligible to donate blood. There's a place for everyone in the mission of the Red Cross, including you. The Red Cross is committed to achieving a blood donation process that treats all potential donors with equality and respect while maintaining the safety of the blood supply. Join us and help save lives. To learn more and make your appointment to donate blood, visit redcrossblood.org/lgbtq. That's redcrossblood.org/lgbtq.