1. "Bridget the detective?"
Posted by harry on Feb-12th-03 at 2:42 PM

Trial, 429.  Robinson is questioning Cunningham.

Q.  Did you look along in the grass by the Kelly fence to see if there were any marks of any passing through that grass?
A.  Yes, sir.
Q.  Did not see any?
A.  No, sir.
Q.  Did you know Bridget walked across that grass along that plot that morning to see if she could see anything there?
A.  No, sir.
Q.  Did not know anything of that?
A.  No, sir.

That's a curious question. Why would Bridget be out examining the yard and who asked her to?  Off hand I know of no other reference to this.

I remember this.
We know that Bridget was outside that morning for several things:
To talk over the fence to the Kelly girl
To vomit
To supposedly to wash windows
not in that order....

I figured he is referring to when Bridget was at that Kelly fence about 9;30, with Mary Doolan, as that is the only thing she did outside that was sort-of verified.
I thought he put his own spin on the question, implying Bridget was looking for something?
Remember how Lizzie was asked,
*If there was blood found on an axe do you know how it got there?*
AND
*If blood was found on your skirt can you say how it got there?*
*Assume there was blood, what would be your explanation?*

--A bluff?  To see what he knew or even if he talked to Bridget?

(Message last edited Feb-12th-03  5:27 PM.)

I wasn't there to observe the condition of the grass (damp or dry?). But when you walk on grass, you leave a trace until the grass recovers and straightens up. Try this yourself in July or August.

Robinson was a good defense attorney.  He used a partial truth in that question to get the jury to hear that "Look!  Someone else, little Bridget Sullivan, didn't see anything either, and she was looking too!"  Bridget was out there, but she was talking and barfing. 

If you look thru Robinson's questions, you'll probably find more 'strange questions' like this.  


(Message last edited Feb-25th-03  11:23 PM.)

Referring back to my post and adding yours to it, Augusta, I've been thinking lately that Lizzie may not have ever really referred to her menstrual period as her *fleas*.
I've not seen that usage yet.
When she was asked if there was a spot of blood found on her skirt how would she account for it's being there?  Did she say it could be a flea bite?  As in literally.

--We have tried to find this strange usage of this phrase elsewhere, right?  and had no success?  I submit that no one calls it her *fleas*, let alone Lizzie.
I think this is a mythical saying, and would like someone to prove me wrong....(?)

Kat, thats a great find!  Hunh, its been staring us in the face forever.  Sounds to me like people have put 2 and 2 together and came up with 5 all these years.  Lizzie said she had fleas or that it was a flea bite and she was having her period, someone combined the two. Hmmm, well, it was men that were in charge of the whole case.  I guess a flea bite is a flea bite is a flea bite. 

Kat:

A good point and an astute observation.

I have just leafed through a half dozen dictionaries including an 1890 Webster and current volumes of Cassell's Dictionary of Slang and the latest American Heritage.  I find no connection between "fleas" and "menstruation."

If Lizzie was fond of pets then (?), it might not be strange for her to have a flea byte. What about ticks in that back yard?

Inquest
Lizzie
87

Q. Did you know there was any blood on the skirt you gave them?
A. No, sir.
Q. Assume that there was, can you give any explanation of how it came there, on the dress skirt?
A. No, sir.
Q. Assume that there was, can you suggest any reason how it came there?
A. No, sir.
Q. Have you offered any?
A. No, sir.
Q. Have you ever offered any?
A. No, sir.
Q. Have you said it came from flea bites?
A. On the petticoats I said there was a flea bite. I said it might have been. You siad [sic] you meant the dress skirt.
Q. I did. Have you offered any explanation how that came there?
A. I told those men that were at the house that I had had fleas; that is all.
Q. Did you offer that as an explanation?
A. I said that was the only explanation that I knew of.
Q. Assuming that the blood came from the outside, can you give any explanation of how it came there?
A. No, sir.
Q. You cannot now?
A. No, sir.

--Here it is.  I was using memory last night.  Thanks Bill for looking at references.  I know Augusta had gone, in the past, to the Museum of Menstruation--way long ago, looking there as well.  Since then, I believe it's been added to that site by someone, and so a myth prospers into other paths of life!

Can we find who first called it that?  And send them some fleas?

I wonder if that doorstep cat the reporter saw was ever in the house.  I suppose fleas could be in the barn?
Yet Bridget had not seen Lizzie go in there for a few months.
Where would she get fleas?

One of the thoughts that had entered my mind about this "fleabite" was that perhaps Lizzie had nicked her leg shaving, I know, weird thought.  But, I checked into it anyway.  From what I read on assorted sites, women didn't begin to shave their armpits until the early 1900s.  Legs were still covered and taboo, so they weren't shaved until hemlines rose in the 1920s.  So, there goes that thought.

You're on a roll, girl!  First the cellar door thing and now the fleabite.  Heres a link for a site about fleas.  Apparently they can live indoors for quite sometime.  So, if there were mice in the house or rats, or the cat got in or was let in awhile ago, it could have deposited fleas in the house.

http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/2000/2081.html

Dr. Dolan questioned by Mr. Adams

Pg. 168

Q. What was it, a dress skirt and an under white skirt?
A. Yes sir and her waist.
Q. Did you examine them?
A. Yes sir.
Q. Did you find some blood on them?
A. One blood spot on the skirt.
Q. How big was it?
A. The size of a good pin head.
Q. That is on the white underskirt?
A. Yes sir.
Q. Do you know whether it came from without, in or from inside out?
A. From without, in.
Q. How do you know that?
A. Simply because the meshes of the cloth on the outside were filled with blood, and it had hardly penetrated on the inside.

the fleas aren't yet resolved.  that description would fit a tiny droplet from a splatter outside the skirt -- as opposed to a trace of blood from a flea bite on the body within the skirt.

i can't find anything connecting "fleas" to menstruation either; however, it does sound like this type of spot could easily come from dropping something in bloody water?  (being neither female nor victorian, i wouldn't know, of course, but it seems reasonable.)

and that reminded me of what victoria lincoln made of it, and i found it in her book:

"she runs upstairs, carrying the clean clothes.  as abby straightens up from smoothing the bedspread, lizzie flings the clothes behind her in one gesture connected with the first blow.  as abby falls dead, lizzie slams the wooden shutters closed.  the harvard surgeons described the nineteen further blows as weak and ill-aimed for a man's, but they were hideously persistent.
     did the seizure pass away when that orgasm of hate was spent?  i think that it did; that lizzie saw with surprise the clothes still clean on the floor behind her--except, perhaps for one tiny, unobserved spot on a starched white underskirt."

of course that's pure speculation.  the phrase "i think that it did," is the key to the weakness of lincoln's case.  she really does use available facts to construct a fiction.  yes, "could have" happened that way.

elsewhere lincoln argues against this spot as being menstrual blood, saying it would have been more like a smear from the inside of the garment.  but it seems to me the way they used basins and pails and so forth, a certain degree of splashing or dripping would have been common.

I think this could be an explanation as to why Lizzie burned a dress.
Which author was it who opined that Lizzie could have wondered and worried and wondered some more about her clothing having a *spot*--whereas her clothes may have been perfectly clean of blood because of precautions...and yet the "out damn spot" mentality took hold and she just couldn't rest easy until that dress was destroyed.?

I have often thought that Lizzie's "bite" may have been caused by the innumerable carpet lice that must have proliferated in that house (and any Victorian house), filled with carpeting, draperies, layers of bedcovers, etc.  Especially when you consider that there were no vacuum cleaners.  Can carpet lice cause visible marks?

I hadn't thought about lice or bed-bugs or things of that nature...Thanks RobertHarry.  I've had flea bites that don't bleed and mosquito bites that don't bleed.  I don't know anything about louse.

It's odd though that Lizzie says she can't come up with any other explanation for the spot.  She supposedly just finished her menses on Wednesday night and has a pail of bloody cloths to show for it...unless she didn't really and forgot to use that excuse because it really didn't happen.
Lizzie only claims the pail as hers when asked about it.

I was wondering if she wore her inner clothing inside out, to save washing.
I've heard even Queen Elizabeth has the sheets turned over before stripping them for the laundry.
If she wore her chemise or petticoat, for example, the right way for a few days and then wore them inside out for another few days?  Then the spot would have been close to her skin after all.
If she reversed her petticoats, that could be an explanation for why the spot appeared from the *outside*?
Edisto might know if this was even possible?

I'm sure it's entirely possible to reverse one's underclothing and get another wear out of it, and I'm sure it was possible in 1892. Might be a little harder to do up the buttons with it inside out, and a corset would probably have been a problem.) However, we have no way of knowing whether Lizzie would have done such a thing.  If she did have such a habit, she might have been ashamed to admit it in court as a possible reason why menstrual blood (assuming that's what she meant by "fleas") would be on the OUTSIDE of her petticoat.  As recently as the 1940s, when I was in elementary school, kids were being told that it wasn't necessarily healthful to bathe every day, especially in the winter.  We were also told a set of underwear would do for several wearings before washing.  That may have been because I went to a school that had many farm children, who didn't have access to modern laundry methods.  I never took the hint myself!

I was thinking too that if it was a drop of menstrual blood, it could have happened as Lizzie put on her petticoat.  Think how you would put on a long petticoat, hold it in front of you, lower it to wear you can step into the waist and ooops, had a small accident that wasn't even noticed.  The area at the back of the petticoat would have been puddled on the floor at Lizzie's feet. 

I don't mean to get indelicate here, but, how often were those menstrual rags changed?  How absorbant were they?  How long before one might, shall we say, overflow?

I like Robert Harry's suggestion, there may have been all kinds of insect vermin that could have been in the Borden's house.  Ticks could be in that backyard, that grass doesn't look like it was mowed that often.  We may never know. 

I thank you for the buttons, Edisto!
I didn't think about the buttons.
And I guess petticoats had buttons too.
Or did we figure out about when elastic waists came into being?

OR. . . perhaps it wasn't menstrual blood after all, but blood originally contained in the body of Abby or Andrew Borden?

Only one small drop, you say?

How many small drops does it take before it becomes a "smoking gun?"

Well, all I know is that I never see a long (ankle- or floor-length) petticoat from the Victorian era that has an elastic waist.  There are lots of them still out there, and they all have button closures. Early elastic was made with real rubber and always detriorated badly.  Most petticoats have only a few buttons, so fastening an inside-out one might not be much of a problem.

--And of course William is quite right.  The blood spot could have come from Abby or Andrew.  This is one place where DNA testing might have helped in the Borden case.  It doesn't appear that the petticoat was covered by other fabric when the blood spot got onto it.  In other words, it doesn't appear that something else was being worn over it and that the blood seeped through another layer of fabric onto it.  It was described as having "viscous" blood residue on the outside, which had barely soaked through the fabric. It seems it wasn't rubbed or dabbed onto the petticoat.  That could mean Lizzie had stripped to her underwear (or hiked up her outer skirt) before chopping away.  Somehow, though, I cannot visualize two such violent, bloody murders (or even one such murder)and only that tiny pinhead-sized spot on the petticoat.

(Just found out that an Englishman named Thomas Hancock "invented" elastic fabric and patented some kinds of elastic fasteners in 1820.  So elastic waists for petticoats were possible, but I still haven't seen any 19th-century ones.)
     

(Message last edited Feb-28th-03  11:09 AM.)

Here's the dilemma: if there was not much blood spattered (?), there would be no blood on the murderer; if there was much blood spattered, how to account for the lack on the accused? Either in 1892 or 1994.

In Lizzie's case, as a resident in the house and discoverer of Andy's body, she could have been smeared innocently.

I've researched the term "fleas" for menstruation, and there just ain't no correlation.  Now, I wonder if Lizzy really meant what she said when she said "I've got fleas."  She really had fleas!  You know, those little nit-picking, biting insects that invade homes and pets?

I wonder if Emmer took a case of fleas to Fairhaven?
Nice welcome she'd get at the Delano house.
Maybe Lizzie took in a stray and caught the little buggers from it.

Anyway, Ray, it's a mystery to me why Lizzie had no blood on her other than that one spot.
Innocent or guilty she should have had some on her.
The people walking 'round the house got blood on them, and their clothes.

It saved her neck, tho, didn't it?

Visiting the "Delano" family? Was that a relation of the Roosevelts?
Wasn't the Boston Delano the one who made a fortune as a drug smuggler in the mid 19th century? Read "History of the Great American Fortunes" lately?

Since Lizzie had no bloodstains on her, that would support her story of going outside after calling Bridget? So who did get stains on their clothes? Not Bridget or Uncle John?

If Lizzie killed or if Bridget killed and changed their clothes they would be found with no blood on them as if they had been outside, right?
Bridget was stopped by word of Lizzie from entering the sitting room...to go and get a Dr. so Bridget did not enter at that time.
When she went up the front stairs and found Mrs. Borden she did enter the room to stand at the foot of the bed.

There was a witness who claimed there was blood on Dr's shoes and Dolan says he himself had blood on his pantaloons.

I don't know about the Delano's.  The Brownell ladies were staying at Moses Delano's house and that is where Emmer made her visit.

Joe, do you mean you searched the primary sources and did not find an equation between Lizzie's having flea's turning into a meaning that Lizzie had her period?
The more I thought about your response, the more I wanted to ask you exactly what you meant. Thanks.

The way I heard it, it was called "the curse" (of Eve?) in olden days.
[So when a character in a drama said "curses" this got a laugh - double entendre?]

(Message last edited Mar-2nd-03  3:01 PM.)