Mondo Lizzie Borden

If you have ever visited the Bristol County Superior Court House in New Bedford, the site of the Lizzie Borden trial, you will find the second floor court room pretty much as it was in 1893. The room is still in tact even if the jury box is now on the opposite side of the room from where it was then. Now there is a massive bookshelf behind the judge’s bench, some added molding and pillars as wall decorations to balance the room, and some added light fixtures and paintings on the wall. Remarkably, the gallery area seating is authentic to the time.

The outside of the building, however, has changed a great deal. I recently found a stereoscopic view of the Bristol County Court House and cropped it to view as one image. The year of this image is unclear, but what we see is fairly close to what Lizzie saw, as Len Rebello, in his Lizzie Borden Past and Present, notes that the addition to the back of the courthouse was added in 1899. Before this addition, stables for visiting lawyers were placed there. During the Borden trial, telegraph offices were located in these stables as well.

Then we have these two photos. The first is from a 1909 postcard. Note the vines on the outside and the additional building in the rear, plus the addition of the steps to a side entrance.

Now we see an image from 2003, before the wheelchair ramp was installed and the front changed a bit more.

This is the side area, where prisoners are taken in and out of the building.

From Len Rebello’s Lizzie Borden Past and Present, p. 191-192:

The Courthouse, New Bedford, Massachusetts

The superior courthouse was designed in 1831 by Russell Warren (1783-1860) of Rhode Island, who worked in New Bedford. He was a principal Greek Revivalist in his home state and with James C. Bucklin designed the Arcade Building in downtown Providence, Rhode Island. It was in the New Bedford courthouse in 1835, that Daniel Webster, the famous orator, pleaded a case.

In 1899, Nat C. Smith designed an addition that was added behind the courthouse. The new addition replaced the stables that were once used for visiting lawyers. Telegraph offices were located in the stables at the time of the Borden trial. It was from this site that daily dispatches were sent.

“In front of the court house is a magnificent lawn with two fine beds of tulips set in its center, one on either side of the walk. Numerous trees dot the level stretch of grass, and the whole is kept in such good condition that the stranger in New Bedford would never, unless especially directed, pick out the establishment as the legal center of this portion of the county and the place where Lizzie Borden is to learn her fate in a few weeks.

You enter the court house in the center of the front end, and before you stretches away a corridor to the back door. There you have at once the only two entrances to the building, unless the cellar is included. In case of a fire it would be difficult for a crowd to leave the apartment upstairs in time to escape the flames, unless the process of combustion was remarkably slow, and especially as fire escapes are unknown on the structures.

On each side of this long corridor, which runs through the center of the lower portion of the building, are the offices and apartments for the different officials, etc. Sharp to the right at the front door are the doors which open on the flight of stairs leading to the court room. These stairs run along by the wall half way and then swing to the left, reaching the court room on the right side about 20 feet away from the front wall. The rear flight of stairs runs up to some offices back of the bench, and offers a means of egress after passing through two or three doors.

The judges bench is at the rear of the room. It is just like the bench in every court room in this Commonwealth. It looks down over the clerk’s seat and the bar enclosure and up toward the spectators’ seats, which are arranged on an incline much like the chairs in a theater, beginning to rise from the bar enclosure to the rear, until at the front wall the highest one is about 10 feet above the top-most stair.

The jury will sit at the right looking towards the judges’ bench, and within five feet of the foreman is located the stand and rail known as the witness box. Sheriff Wright’s station is directly opposite, where he can see everything going on in the court room, but does not have his attention diverted by any minor details.”

Sources
“At the Court House / Arrangements Which Have Been Made for the Great Trial,” Fall River Daily Herald, Monday, June 5, 1893: 7.
Brink, Jr., Robert J., ed. Courthouses of the Commonwealth, Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1984, 95.

From The New York Times, June 24, 1893.

I am forever tickled by this seller’s creativity. I even bought a purse they created a while back. Check out her newest idea for the Bordenphile in your life: .Lizzie Borden hairclips psychobilly punk. By CapgunCowgirl. Only $3 starting bid and $1 shipping. Can’t beat that with a axe.

These are a cute pair of pink/white polka dot Lizzie Borden hair clips! So cute! And you get two of these bad boys! These are approx. 2″ in length.

This photo of the stage and film actress Nance (pronounced Nancy) O’Neil, comes up on eBay from time to time, always, so far, for a starting bid of $75.

It is a lovely image, but the seller’s description is not to be taken as fact, i.e. there is no proof whatsoever that Lizzie Borden and Nance O’Neil were lesbian lovers. They were, we know, friends for some time.

As an actress she was the star in companies featuring the young John and Lionel Barrymore, but she remains known to posterity in part due to the fact that she was the lesbian lover of the legendary acccused murderess Lizzie Borden. A rare original silver print photograph of Nance O’Neil with Elsie Ferguson in the play The House of Women. Dimensions ten by eight inches. Light corner wear with small chip to one corner else fine.