1. "Victorian Christmas"
Posted by augusta on Dec-26th-03 at 6:54 PM

Here's a goodie.  This site has all sorts of different Christmas-ey original articles and things on a Victorian Christmas.  What fun to browse.
http://www.victoriana.com/christmas/

Good reading Augusta.

I wonder how the Borden's celebrated Christmas.  Did they have a tree? Did they decorate?  Exchange gifts? Was it one of the few times, in later years, that they came together as a family?  Stuff we'll probably never know.

If anything can be said about the Victorian/Gilded Age is that they were BIG on decorative displays.  I'm surprised some of the Christmas trees stood up under the weight

A Victorian magazine I subscribe to said that if there were one word to describe the decor it would be "abundance".  I'll bet Lizzie had a huge tree with the works when she moved to Maplecroft, and as Christmas became more popular to celebrate. 

I see Bridget getting up like any other morning, warming up leftovers and making her johnny cake.  Andrew throwing his slops out in the snow.  Lizzie upstairs, watching other merrymakers through her bedroom window, wishing she could entertain properly ...

The book "Two Years Before the Mast" circa 1840 said that "Yankees don't keep Christmas"; it was just another workday. Sailors on Spanish ships averaged about 20 days of vacation, compared to the exploited Yankee ships.
No gifts for the Cratchits in "A Christmas Carol", just a feast.

Augusta, I think you're absolutely right in your description of "A Borden Family Christmas".  How very sad it must have been.  Abby probably slipped out on Christmas Day (while Andrew was taking his afternoon nap on the sitting room sofa) to go visit her sister and take a few small gifts to her sister's children.

Several books, including Radin and Lincoln, describe Lizzie helping to cook and serve the Fall River Newsboys Annual Christmas Dinner.  In those days, newsboys were either orphans who had to support themselves or fatherless boys who had to help support their widowed mothers and younger siblings.  It was a grim, hard existence and the Christmas Dinner must have been a glorious occasion for them.  So at least Lizzie got to do something nice for the holidays.

And the Bordens probably did celebrate Thanksgiving, which was a respectable New England holiday, unlike Christmas with its pagan trappings.  Bridget probably cooked a turkey and served two meals, one to Andrew and Abby and a later separate sitting for the girls.

I don't know why some writers (Lincoln?) dismissed Lizzie
and her charity work. It takes a lot of time to do volunteer
work & I don't think she was doing it to make herself look
holier-than-thou, I think she just had a life that had a lot
of free time in it -- she could have just shopped & napped
and done things of that nature. The fact she actually was
out there doing things for others doesn't look like a negative
to me. She didn't need to work for money, but she was working
in a sense....

Lizzie could have just done nothing, like Emma (why were they so different?). It is a mark in Lizzie's favor, then or now, that she devoted herself to charitable works.

Never mind that the hospital budget, and its allocation, is a political plum. Her education of Chinese youths is a way to produce cheap labor for the mills (and split the workers). Anyone can read something bad into a person's good works. The fact that she did them should count for a jury, then or now. Your opinions?

Lizzie joined the Central Church in 1885, but her charitable work seems to have escalated around 1890.
I think I might be one who would tend to trivialize Lizzie's service, but mainly because it was so late in her life and some of it so close to the time of the murders.  I'm not convinced as to how 'hands-on' Lizzie's service really was or whether she mainly sat on boards like her father.
If she was really charitable in her heart and religious too, I can't seem to rationalize her role in the murders.



(Message last edited Feb-13th-04  11:03 PM.)

Did she kill anybody?
Her changes around 30 may be just that she matured.
Does anyone here act the same over 30 as when they were much younger?
Maybe this teaching was due to her maternal instincts?

One thing though, Kat, given her reception at church after the trial, I can't imagine Lizzie giving the town a second opportunity by returning to the WCTU (perhaps they were among those who snubbed her and that is why she left them out of her will). She was very good to the servants in her home and gave to the Humane Society.  I don't think any of this makes her innocent or good, but I do think with Denise Noe that outside of the double event she might have been a good person.  Had she grown up in a different family, might she have led a blameless life?  I found the question an intriguing one!

--Lyddie

The WCTU got kicked out of their cushy rooms in the AJBorden Building pretty quickly after the acquittal.
See Rebello.

Otherwise, yes, she can be seen in all kinds of lights.

Yeah, I know, Kat, I was wondering if all her ex-friends belonged and this was her way of getting back?

--Lyddie

I don't do any volunteer work -- I'd like to, I keep
meaning to, maybe I will some day. But, I still hate
to not give someone a little credit for doing it.....