1. "Benjamin Buffington ?"
Posted by harry on Jun-14th-02 at 1:04 PM

The August 11, Evening Standard newspaper, page 3, has an article covering an interview with a Benjamin Buffington. He is said to be a "deputy sheriff and former district officer, and at one time tax assessor of Fall River". It is a quite lengthy item and Mr. Buffington claims to have visited the grounds of the Borden house on the day of the murder and to have talked with amongst others, Bridget. I had not heard of him before this article. Does anyone have any information on him? Or is he a made up character by the newspaper to put forth a point of view?

Wow!  This is a neat coincidence!  I just got a package in the mail, containing Vol. I of Silvia's "Victorian Vistas."  Guess who's mentioned in it?  No less than Benjamin Buffington (although the name is spelled "Buffinton" here)! I note that Hoffman's "YIOFR" has a reference to him too, but it pretty much says exactly what the newspaper did.  Hoffman was apparently unable to find out anything more about him.  The item in "VV" says that on July 27, 1879, there was an incident at the Slade Mill in which some drunk and disorderly  spinners were insulting people who were returning from church.  Apparently there was a mill strike going on at the time.  Buffinton, an ex-detective, had been on duty at the mill during the strike, and he arrested a young man, George Marsden, for reasons unknown.  Then someone in the crowd fired a pistol, and Buffinton ordered two mill overseers to fire their own weapons.  A young man named Frank O'Neill was hit by several buckshot.  The arrestee was taken to the police station and subsequently released.  The next day, O'Neill made a statement to a newspaper in which he said Buffinton and a man named Alfred Wordell were dragging and choking Marsden, and that O'Neill intervened because he was a friend of Marsden's father.  For his trouble, O'Neill was shot five times in the hand and body and sustained nineteen bullet holes in his coat and pants.  Sounds as if Buffinton/Buffington liked to hang around where news was being made! Might he have been related to Mrs. Churchill, whose maiden name was Buffinton?  According to Rebello, she had eight siblings.

Thank you, Edisto!!  I was hoping somebody would check YIOFR for me.

Yes, I too noticed the Buffinton/Buffington similarity. The spelling of people's last names was not a strong point of most of the papers.

Based upon the article you cite, our Mr. B. seems somewhat of a character and I don't know how much to believe. He says he was on the Borden grounds, including in the barn, but never went in the house. He said he was there about 1 o'clock.  I don't see Bridget coming out of the house to talk to anyone so I find that part a little weak. He does seem to have most of the facts pretty accurate though.

Hopefully as I read on I will encounter him again.

(Message last edited Jun-14th-02  2:59 PM.)

Buffinton's mentioned in Muriel Arnold's book, Hands of Time, which I referred to in the thread YARD MAN.  I put a quetion mark next his name, as I didn't remember him as a "Player".  He was hanging out with Wixon...
Edisto, you just read that book?
Is there anymore about him in there?
That was great detective work, BTW!

Oooo, someone new in the Borden mix!  Perhaps he has something that may be a missing clew? 

Edisto,
I don't have Muriel Arnold's book.  I got it from inter-library loan 2x, and  made notes.
Do you own it?
Pg. 208 mentions Buffinton.
Since she relied so much on news items for her book, do you think there's not much left to say about this character, c. 1892?

Sorry, Kat, for ignoring your two posts asking questions about this.  Yes, I am the proud owner of a copy of Muriel Arnold's book.  I finished reading it a week or so ago and carefully put it away -- but where?  I haven't been able to locate it today, but it's somewhere in my crowded bookshelves, and I'll double-check it for Buffinton refrences.  I have only a vague memory of reading something about him in the book, and it was probably the same thing you read.

Thanks, Edisto.

If you don't remember much more about him, then I'm sure there's not much to remember.

Between you & your V.V., AND Harry with his new E.S., we're finding out all kinds of new and interesting things.

Why is it that we always find things when we're NOT looking for them?  I did find my copy of "Hands of Time," but didn't see any further reference to Buffin(g)ton in it.  However, while I was looking for a reference to Harry's bloody sofa (actually the Bordens' bloody sofa)that was mentioned on another thread, I found something about BB in the "Lizzie Borden Sourcebook," page 48.  It's a rather long piece, apparently from the "Fall River Herald," so I'll paraphrase:  It's entitled: "Benny Buffington/Talks Interestingly and Gives a Theory."  Buffington says he was at the Borden house around 1:00 P. M. on August 4 and talked with Bridget, Lizzie, and the inmates of surrounding houses.  He described the Borden murders as a "crime unlike any other crime" and said the motive wasn't robbery, revenge or spite, but the "removal of somebody out of the way."  He didn't go into the house, but did examine the yard, fences and barn.  He said there wasn't sufficient dust in the barn to show footprints, so nobody could have told whether Lizzie had been there as she said.  He saw no evidence on the ground that anyone had jumped any of the fences, although he believed even the highest Borden fence could have been jumped.  He knew when each of the Bordens was killed and believed the weapon was a very sharp cleaver or something similar, because an axe would have opened the wounds wider and caused more blood spatter.  He defended the inaction of the police, saying, "...the police can't go ahead when they haven't evidence to convict."  He compared the Borden case to one in which he had been involved when he was "state officer."  Unfortunately, the date of this interview isn't given, but Buffington seemed to think somebody was going to break down and confess and that the case would be solved within 24 hours.  He refused to divulge his theory of the case, but said he would do so if an arrest was made. (Yeah, right!)  On the same page is part of the ad for the sale of dress goods at Sargent's, which states clearly that the sale will be the following Monday.  If Lizzie was trying to get Bridget out of the house on Thursday by telling her about a dress-goods sale the following Monday, she must have thought Bridget would need a long head start!

(Answering my own posts again)  Now that I look at it, this seems to be the same article Harry read, except from a different newspaper.  I'm not even sure it's from a different paper, in fact.  About the only things we might have learned are (a) that Buffington was sometimes called "Benny," and (b) that he didn't see enough dust in the barn for footprints to be a consideration.

Benny? I love it!

That article is almost identical to the one in the Standard, at least in content. Most, if not all, of the stories in the Standard do not carry a reporter's byline. I know the Standard carried a lot of reports from the Associated Press and this may be one of them. Unfortunately the page from which I copied the Standard article is a continuation page and the beginning page is missing so I can't check the source.

If it is from the A.P. then most papers would simply repeat it with possible minor adjustments.