.SallyG wrote:
peculiar spells" and "fits of anger" by many witness accounts. I don't know that Emma ever gave out any information on her mothers mental state, though she was old enough to have witnessed any spells or fits of anger when she was a child, and most likely would have remembered them. "Peculiar spells" and "fits of anger" sounds to me as though Sarah may very well have suffered from bi-polar disorder, which would have been unknown and undiagnosed back then.... we don't know, but it probably was not a very happy union if Sarah was bi-polar.
Bi-polar disorder is very often hereditary, and it's very likely that Lizzie also suffered from it, from all accounts of her personality. Emma seems to have been a very passive person, although she may have disliked Abby and seen her as an interloper because she loved her mother and didn't want to see her replaced..........But let's suppose that Lizzie did inherit her mothers bi-polar disorder. The description of her as a child, being quiet, withdrawn, and lacking in confidence, would fit the diagnosis. Although she did blossom as an adult and was more involved with people and activities. But her bi-polar disorder would probably have been progressing as well, and Andrew and Abby would have found her increasingly more difficult to handle. Andrew seems to have gone to great lengths to placate Lizzie and keep her happy...... He and Abby may have come to the conclusion that Lizzie was going to have to be "put away", and Andrew had reluctantly decided to do just that.
In the meantime, everyone was getting sick...most likely food poisoning from the fish...but Abby was probably so keyed up over the whole impending thing, that she feared Lizzie knew what was about to happen and was trying to kill everyone
All through the inquest and trial Lizzie and Emma tried to down play how bad things were between them and Abby. But let’s look at Abby’s fear keeping in mind SallyG’s post. Abby felt she had been poisoned what we don’t know is WHY she thought she had been poisoned or more importantly WHO she (Abby) thought might have poisoned her. If it was in the milk (which we know others drank with no problem) then it could be someone outside the house. We have to ask, was there a business problem that Andrew was having that only Abby knew about which would make her think someone outside would want them dead. Or was there someone inside. Emma was away, Andrew wouldn’t have wanted her dead, that left Bridget and Lizzie. I would assume she would have thought of Lizzie first. If things in the household had gotten so bad that Abby was at the point of thinking Lizzie wanted her dead she could have made up the poisoning attempt in an effort to get Andrew to do something about Lizzie. Which is wht he got to mad at her for going to Dr. Bowen. And, that places Andrew in the middle, first having to listen Lizzie complain about Abby, and then listening to Abby complain about Lizzie. He was probably being driven to distraction. If Lizzie was suffering from some type of mental illness, or if there was incest involved, and if Lizzie was clearly getting out of control so much so that Abby feared for her life then something had to be done. This could be why Emma went on vacation at this time. Clearly Andrew and Abby weren’t going to move out, they couldn’t throw Lizzie out or even ask her to move out, Social Customs and restrictions at that time wouldn’t have allowed it. The only choice would have been to have her committed. This was brought up in another great post. The reason why I bring up the article “What Made Lizzie Kill” and incest is this: in that article the writers talked about a case that occurred in Boston in 1867. A girl there had been abused by her step father and although she told people they all thought she was crazy. The step father threatened to send her to a reform school if she told anyone and at that point she killed him. They note that in Fall River there was a sub culture of prostitution in the 1860s and their belief is that Andrew would not have turned to it. Besides, can anyone see Andrew paying for sex when he was too cheap to burn lights in his home at night? However Sarah, suffering from “women’s complaints” and unable to perform her wifely duties left Andrew with no place to go. Carlisle and Savage suggest Andrew would have been to proud to turn to prostitutes. This also gives credence to Brown’s claim that Andrew fathered a son out of wedlock. Andrew could have turned to his youngest daughter in an unnatural way thinking she was too young to do anything about. Lizzie may have repressed the abused and then suddenly remembered it, maybe in August of 1892, this coupled with any mental illness she may be suffering along with her hatred for her step mother could have led to the killings. Especially if she thought she was going to be “put a way”. What were Andrew and Uncle John talking about Wednesday night? Was it about Lizzie and how out of control she was getting? We’ll never know that unfortunately, but something definitely caused Lizzie to snap. When all is said is done, who else but Lizzie could have killed the Borden’s? I think the posts on metal illness and Lizzie being put away were great and really touched on another possibility in the case. Both Carlisle and Savage note that Parricide is the most extreme and rarest response to incest.
StevenB
Source: American Heritage, jul/aug 1992, vol 3 Issue 4 p 66-73
