What did Lizzie whisper?

[camgarsky4]

I was rereading the Boston Globe coverage the week leading up to and thru the Inquest. As happens every time I reread primary source documents, something new popped out to me.
Pasted below is an excerpt from the August 9 edition of the Boston Globe.

The setting for the excerpt is Officer Doherty arriving at the Borden house the morning of August 9 to bring Bridget to the Police station for her inquest interview. The narrative provided in the articles are quite thought provoking.

The key sentence, "He saw Lizzie place her arm on the servant's shoulder and whisper earnestly in her ear, one brief remark."

What exactly did Lizzie feel compelled to whisper to Bridget, as Bridget was exiting the house on her way to testify?

Based on the flow of the article, it seems that the source for the portion describing Lizzie whispering to Bridget was Doherty himself. The quote, ".....Doherty would give a good deal to know." certainly suggests the source was Doherty.

If Lizzie was just wishing Bridget 'good luck' or 'Sorry about this' or any other general sentiment, why the need to get up tight and whisper? Presumably the only non-family members present was the officer himself. I've added another excerpt from the same Boston Globe edition that gives us insight into Bridget's state of mind at this point. She was clearly (and to a certain extent understandably) in an emotional state.

Lastly, Bridget never spent the night at the Borden house again after she left with officer Doherty the morning of August 9. As the second excerpt below tells us, she actually wanted out of the Borden home the previous day, but the police wouldn't allow her.

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[Kat]

Sorry, but don’t you find the Boston Globe a bit reckless with their coverage? I myself have tried not to use their articles because the local papers were much better (which you already know through your research experience).Their artist was fab tho!
Do you happen to find any other corroborating story like this one, anywhere else- just wondering?
They created rumors, and have the Trickey-McHenry debacle and apology still in their future.
In fact, Bridget became a tool in their machinations, and Trickey was later indicted by the grand jury for trying to suborn her as a witness. He fled to Canada and died under a train. Good ole irresponsible Boston Globe.

Hoffman states that Trickey was in town by Friday to write the coverage for his newspaper, and “He became close to policemen Michael Mullaly, William Medley and Assistant City Marshal John Fleet.” (Yesterday in Old Fall River, Paul Dennis Hoffman, 2000)

When I have scanned through my Boston Globe document, anything that seemed interesting that got my attention turned out to be written by Trickey! Good writer, but I don’t trust him.

The photos are from Porter:

[camgarsky4]

Kat -- I have a different twist and view of the Boston Globe coverage.

My opinion is that Trickey was hyper competitive and his coverage of the early days of the case were superior to any other paper. But after the preliminary hearing, new information about the case dwindled and the news coverage stagnated. That did not serve Trickey's ambitious drive and, at some point in September, after becoming excessively bothersome and annoying to the Fall River police, the police via McHenry starting maliciously feeding Trickey the information that resulted in the October 10 articles.

So, while he, and the Boston Globe, unfathomably, did a pathetic job of properly sourcing and validating the October 10 information, he reported the info he had been given by McHenry.

Perhaps Doherty lied that he saw Lizzie whisper in Bridget's ear, but that is sure a pretty odd thing to lie about and I don't think the police were feeding Trickey 'garbage' until after the preliminary hearing and after he wouldn't stop being a pest.

Lastly, if at that early stage in the case coverage (August 9, 5 days after the murders), Trickey had been misquoting/representing habitually, his sources would have dried up immediately. Based on his coverage through the Preliminary Hearings (end of August), that does not seem to be the case.

[Kat]

Kat -- I have a different twist and view of the Boston Globe coverage.
…[partial]
Perhaps Doherty lied that he saw Lizzie whisper in Bridget's ear, but that is sure a pretty odd thing to lie about and I don't think the police were feeding Trickey 'garbage' until after the preliminary hearing and after he wouldn't stop being a pest.

Lastly, if at that early stage in the case coverage (August 9, 5 days after the murders), Trickey had been misquoting/representing habitually, his sources would have dried up immediately. Based on his coverage through the Preliminary Hearings (end of August), that does not seem to be the case.

Thank you for your excellent rebuttal, and yr honest opinion. I am showing a partial of yr post because this is the area where I might have further comment.
Trickey was the kind of writer where it was the little things he *noticed* and that seemed so realistic one stops and thinks ‘that might have happened’. But they are unprovable, like gossip, and not worthy, at the time, to refute.

May I ask, so I am clearly understanding:
Who do you think was: “The officer at this time was at the foot of the steps outside. He saw Lizzie…” etc.?
Was this a partial of a longer article?
Did Trickey write it?
(It is written to sound like the reporter saw all this happen and was there.)
I will ponder yr conclusions, thanks.

I had to read about 100 pages of the dratted Boston Globe, helping an author with their research, leading up to and including the debacle, and its aftermath. After that, I became much more cynical of their coverage because of their tactics, and also I became more protective of Bridget and her reputation, because she really had no advocate. We don’t even know for sure if she could read or write. (edit here)[The Boston Globe's] use of her to tell a story on Lizzie, that may or may not have happened, seems unjust to me. But even as knowledgeable readers we can certainly be swayed into believing the scene could have happened, as I said it seems reasonable and we can picture this reaction by Bridget to the stresses because of human nature.

But the only time I will use The Boston Globe is if I see the same or similar story printed somewhere else.

[Kat]

I found the similar story printed in the Evening Standard, without the extra *touch* literally and figuratively of Lizzie. I also note the last line where there is already a complaint of fatigue of being misquoted.

From our parent website, LizzieAndrewBordenVirtualMuseumAndLibrary
https://lizzieandrewborden.com/pressrep ... -1892c.htm

The Evening Standard—Tuesday, August 9, 1892 Page 6

THE CHAIN OF EVIDENCE

Forged by the Police Against
Borden Murderer.

Full Report of Conference With
District Attorney.

All the Facts in Possession of
Authorities.

Laid Before the Public by the
Evening Standard.

Startling Disclosures Now Made
For the First Time.

[Special Dispatch.]
Fall River, Aug. 9, ….

………etc...

The final decision of the conference was to do nothing until morning, when the fact would be positively decided whether an inquest need be commenced or not.

It was the firm opinion of all that prior to such action been taken Bridget Sullivan ought to be given a vigorous examination.
It was stated by the marshal that she was in a very nervous state, a condition resulting from a cause yet to be fully determined.

He said that on Monday morning, after her return, she made hasty preparations to leave the house, and an officer on guard saw her packing up her effects. He asked her what she was going to do, and she replied to get out.

The marshal said the officer immediately informed him of the circumstances, and he instructed the guard to tell her she must not go on penalty of arrest.

Then Mr. Hilliard told how he called on the girl in the afternoon, and found her a physical and mental wreck.

She cried and said she could not sleep nights and was afraid to remain longer in the house.

He had reasoned with her and assured her that no harm could possibly come to her, but that availed nothing.

Bridget was not to be consoled. He left her to endure a season of mental unrest, and suggested that by this morning she might be in a ripe condition to effectively interview.

This plan was endorsed thoroughly.

While the marshal was not without some evidence of a safe character to warrant action, the desirability of adding Bridget Sullivan’s unreserved story to the general fund of information already possessed was apparent.

Then the conference adjourned.

The district attorney retired to bed at the Mellen House and the others to the Wilbur House, where for another hour the mayor and officers discussed the situation.

The mayor, who has used the press with the greatest consideration, both in his official and social capacity, has finally decided to stop talking to reporters.

His experience in being misquoted in serious ways by men who ought to know better has injured the chance of other well-meaning correspondents, and has done him a great injustice.

[camgarsky4]

The officer 'picking up' Bridget and standing by the steps was Officer Doherty.

It isn't much of a surprise that Bridget was 'distraught' and wanting out of the murder house. I don't think that indicates guilt or any other emotion besides feeling angst and stress about having been pulled into a horrible and totally undesirable situation. Her life had been literally turned upside down over this 5 day period.

Regarding the reliability of newspapers vs. other sources. I have found substantive errors (in some instances intentional or sloppy, not sure which) in official documents. Clear errors in census reports, birth and death registers, city directories. I think we can all identify sworn testimony or statements that feel a bit sketchy and can't be confirmed independently. So I presume that we all try to make sure we double or triple validate information anytime we can.

However, sometimes information is only single sourced. Hopefully in those instances, the new learning is not of huge consequence. That is how I view this tidbit about Lizzie whispering in Bridget's ear.

Lizzie could have whispered most anything to Bridget. She might have said something kind, supportive, evil, threatening or neutral. I just found it interesting and added a human touch to the case that I had previously not been aware of.

[Kat]

Yes, but the *human touch* can be insidious, attractive and intentional by the original news writer. At the time, as you are aware, we had the advent of *Yellow Journalism" where, due to all manner of dramatic crimes (and the public's thirst for entertainment), different news groups handled the news in different ways: it became a testing ground and touchstone to the evolution of the future of these papers, and created their readership going forward.

I've had to read about this in learned treatises from early days of evaluating the news coverage once we as Bordenites gained access to these newspapers...probably since around 2004-2005. There are a few critiques in my computer: this one I quote from was delivered at a Conference. The auther uses the formidable writer/news maven Julian Ralph's narrative dispatches, and Harry's favorite writer on the case.
I used parts making up less than a page of a 15 page analysis, to possibly better explain what my position (usually) is when I, personally, myself, am hopefully trying to be careful in reportage on the case itself, using a critical style: each of us, still learning about this Borden murder case, can assess our own threshold of fact, dramatic appeal, or a combination of both, such as this case coverage uniquely offers.
- - - - - -
"A Front Seat to Lizzie Borden:
Julian Ralph, Literary Journalism, and the Construction of Criminal Fact"

Paper presented at the Midwest Modern Language Association Conference
Chicago, Illinois
November, 1997

Karen S. H. Roggenkamp
Department of English
University of Minnesota


Introduction
Thomas Connery, investigating late-nineteenth-century literary newspaper work, has suggested that students of American periodicals must recognize the historically-bound intersections between narrative types. By the turn of the century, journalism was becoming increasingly professionalized and managed, exchanging what modern readers would classify as subjective or "literary" styles for more objective, formulaic prose. By the 1890s, Connery suggests, a line was already "being drawn between two distinct prose categories, with the news (facts/nonimaginative writing) . . .on one side, and the novel or short story (fiction/imaginative writing) . . . on the other" ("Third" 4). Numerous scholars have delineated how editors associated "real news" with ideals of objectivity and dissociated it from fictive forms,1 but Connery argues that despite this (class-instructed) industrial imperative, a "third way to tell the story" remained vital to some late nineteenth-century reporters, investigation of which provides insight into a transitional period in American newspaper history when the constructs of fact and fiction--especially as they were manipulated to report sensational crimes--became value-laden and polarized. Connery designates the "third way to tell the story" as an example of "literary journalism," defined as writing which "reconciled fact and fiction, reality and language, by being a mode of expression more imaginative than conventional journalism but less imaginative than fiction”("Third" 6).2 It was a writing style which would lend itself, time and again, to critical social and political investigations within the periodical press.

…..
……Perhaps (Julian) Ralph recognized what David Papke has articulated--that at the end of the nineteenth century, two types of crime reportage flourished: stories appealing to a working-class readership, and stories targeting a bourgeois audience. Both, however, in their use of either sensation or objectivity respectively, "framed crime and the criminal without making an active, open choice of position. By so doing, they deprived readers of a powerful means of recognizing and criticizing their world" (Papke 74).

Papke's comments prove suggestive in consideration of the Lizzie Borden case. Those papers which reported the case as fact only, such as the New York Times, sought to suppress the social subtext and reify the status quo by avoiding "literary" devices in their construction of the news. By depersonalizing the news, it would become a thing of "reality," and therefore closed to rigorous interrogation. On the other hand, those papers which sensationalized the case's gore by depicting bloody hatchets and crushed skulls, such as the BostonGlobe, seduced readers with a different type of social reification. By melodramatizing the lurid side of the case, the news became depersonalized entertainment in another sense, a thing to consume voyeuristically and to digest without critical perspective. ……

……[In End Notes]
9Schudson and others argue that "objective reporting did not become the chief norm or practice in journalism in the late nineteenth century when the Associated Press was growing." Rather, the 1890s still witnessed "as much emphasis in leading papers on telling a good story as on getting the facts. . . . Reporters sought as often to write 'literature' as to gather news" (5).....

--Not everyone is aware that as they read, they may be called upon to exert *critical perspective.* That is my only position, and offering caution to any newsreaders here going forward, or rather, backward. Ain't History Grand!? And endlessly fascinating...

[Steveads2004]

Bridget being a nervous wreck is completely understandable even if we believe she played no role in the murders. However her "morning sickness" does make one wonder if she had some foreknowledge that the murder day was not going to be a good day. Also this whisper in her ear is new and fascinating to me. It suggests some collusion between the two with the whisper being perhaps a final exhortation? "Be strong your reward is coming"? Hmmmm

[camgarsky4]

My pet theory is that Bridget woke up with a hangover on murder morning. That assumes that she and her friend enjoyed a couple 'sips' the evening before. That would explain her nausea, headache and eventual vomiting.

Others theorize that, Wednesday night, she sipped some of the 'bad' milk that the elder Borden's had drank on Tuesday (you may recall the Borden's were VERY ill Tuesday night).

[Kat]

I still think that the arm around the shoulder and the whisper in Bridget’s ear never happened. It didn’t show up in other news coverage, when comparing. But yes Bridget’s reactions are probable, but maybe for other reasons.

When someone has been imbibing a little too much the previous night, don’t they vomit close to the time they get up? I’m not saying Bridget didn’t vomit, but *maybe for other reasons.*
In the Prelim we have a timeline of Bridget’s actions according to her own testimony.
She came downstairs murder morning 6:15, but didn’t throw up until between 8:45 and 9 a.m. And says she was at it 10 to 15 minutes! And she says by then Mr. Borden was gone.

https://lizzieandrewborden.com/chronolo ... meline.htm