The Lizzie Borden Society archive

There was an article on this in the LBQ last year:
Hoffman, Paul Dennis. "The Crucial 20 Minutes: A Revised Lizzie Borden Time Line." Lizzie Borden Quarterly VIII.3 (July 2001): 22-23.
Hoffman asserts that Lizzie had more than enough time to kill her father and clean herself up afterwards based on his new reading of the testimony and time lines of the case.

He "assumes" as accurate the following facts:
1.  Andrew came downstairs at 6:35am and returned to the house at 10:45am
2.  Lizzie discovered her father's body at 11:10 am (citing Len Rebello and transcripts that say Bidget was seen running across the street to alert Bowen that Andew had been murdered).

He says the events in the 25 minutes from when Andrew came home until Bridget spoke to Mrs. Borden is accounted for by only two people: Bridget and Lizzie. If they are accurate it is difficult to see how Lizzie had committed the murders.

He hypothesizes that the 25 minutes is WRONG and that "all of the events mentioned did not happen at the times given, or did not happen at all"---that Lizzie killed Andrew at some other time "and simply filled in that time space with fictitious events to Bridget, and later to the authorities, so that it only seemed there was too little time for Lizzie to do all of the above tasks and still kill her father . . ."

Apparently, this theory hinges on the idea of Bridget as "only an Irish immigrant in a strange country and her empolyers, now Lizzie and Emma since the two elder Bordens were dead, belonged to a wealthy and respected American family." Either Bridget was convinced that Lizzie's truth was THE TRUTH or she was in on it.

Here is his "new" timeline:
1.  Andrew comes home at 10:45am
2.  Bridget goes to her room at 10:48 or so (a good 9 or 10 minutes earlier than stated in testimony)
3.  Lizzie kills Andrew at 10:50---giving herself an extra 10 minutes or a total of 20 minutes "to hide the ax, clean up and change clothes."

I can agree that Andrew arrived home about 10:45 based on Mathers testimony. He says he was there when Mathers looked at the clock and it was 10:40. Let's say he left a few minutes later, 10:42. It was only a short 3 minute walk to 92 Second St.

What I don't necessarily agree with is the time Bridget was called. The time 11:10 is mentioned.

Cunningham called the police at 11:15. He called based on what he had heard from Mrs. Churchill's conversation at the stable. He then went to the corner of Borden and Second street to use the phone to call. This must have taken a few minutes, let's say 5.  Before that Mrs. Churchill had to see Lizzie at the door, come over to find out what happened, then go to the stable to find her hired man to get help. This must have taken another 5 minutes.

So if we add those two up, thats 10 minutes.  Back that out of 11:15 it's 11:05.  That ties in with Bridget's a few minutes after she heard the City Hall clock.

I can't believe it was 11:10 that Bridget was called. All that described above, Churchill seeing Lizzie, going over, finding out the story, going to the stable, Cunningam hearing the story, his going to the paint store and calling the police all would have had to happen in a 5 minute span.

Cunningham was reacting to what Churchill did not Bridget.

From historical knowledge of New England life; I would submit that the clock on City Hall was VERY accurate--at least as accurate as a time piece could be.  That clock was probably "the master time piece" for the city.

Factories would have bells or whistles to summons workers and announce the hour of start/lunch/finish.  Their time might well have been set according to the "standard" which in Fall River 1892 was the City Hall clock in its tower.

Here in Attleborough (spelling as of 1892 - was changed to Attleboro in 1914 when it became a city vs a town) the standard of time was the clock in the tower of the old Second Congregtional Church...there's those Congregtionalist.

Until nearly the mid-20th century that church clock was "THE" mark of time.  Its bells rang on the quarter-hour, half-hour and hour.  Even the rail station master set his watch by that clock.  Schools, factories, and municipal workers all heeded the bells.

After a 30 year mechanical breakdown that the parish said it couldn't afford to repair the City of Attleboro, believe it or not, was asked to pay the church for the repairs, citing that the clock had been the time standard by which the many residents of Attleboro had lived for so many years that it was appropriate to pay for the repairs.

Of course it helped that the Mayor of our City is a member of the Second "Congo" parish, there was hollering in city hall that night. (citation of separation of church and state). Although she (the Mayor) tried to convince the Council that paying for the repairs "was the right thing to do" it didn't float.

In the end an anonymous benefactor came forward with the cash.  Today the clock stikes only the hour and the half-hour and no ones really hears it. 

BC

I'm with Harry on this one.  One factor I've always found "interesting" is that Lizzie herself gave the alarm and didn't wait for Bridget to come down, wonder where the elder Bordens were, and perhaps discover Andrew's body herself.  If Lizzie did commit the murders and needed time to dispose of the hatchet and clean herself up, she must have found that she had more than ample time to do those things and then yell for Bridget.  John Douglas's "The Cases That Haunt Us" mentioned that killers prefer to have someone else discover the victim (victims in this case), so having poor Bridget, or even John Morse, find Andrew's body would have been typical behavior for a murderer.  Of course, it is the behavior Lizzie exhibited with regard to Abby's body; she let somebody else do the discovering.  If I had been Lizzie and killed two people in a fit of rage, I would have washed up, put on my hat and shawl and gone downstreet right away, maybe leaving a note for Bridget (or, even better, for Abby) to the effect that I had some emergency shopping to do and not to expect me for the noon meal.

From all that has been said about the City Hall clock and how important it was it seems to me that if it was as DeMille suggested, known to be out of whack that day, then the newspaper would have had some notice of that fact, alerting people and notifying them the situation was being looked into and when it would be fixed, etc.

Another thought, if Lizzie had killed her father at a different time than that say 25 minute interval before she alerted Bridget to come down, then would the body still have been dripping blood when Dr. Bowen looked at it?  Wasn't it Bowen who made that remark not a newspaper reporter?  If Mr. B. was killed quite distant to the finding of his body then the statements by all the doctors, etc., as to the state of the blood congealment(or lack thereof)would have, then, to be mistatements or inaccurate. Therefore I think that Mr. Borden seems to have been a very late event in the timeline of the mornings mischief.