Mondo Lizzie Borden

You have gotta see these. They are remarkable.

Fall River Photographs.

Mary Beth Griffo Rigby

The ongoing fight to save the eight homes that abut Charlton Memorial Hospital in Fall River is soon to cease—-lost to the powers that be that decided that a flat top parking lot was a better choice than building a parking deck on their established parking area.

One of the eight homes has some historical significance to the city of Fall River as it was the former home to Alice Russell, Lizzie Borden’s friend, and the woman to told the Grand Jury that she saw Lizzie burning a dress in the kitchen stove at 92 Second Street just days after the murders. If Alice had not come forward with her eyewitness testimony, it is doubtful whether Lizzie Borden would have been indicted—and history might never have heard of this woman who seems to captivate us now so much.

Regardless, this just in from Southcoast Hospital Group, the non-profit owners of Charlton:

Dear Charlton Neighbors:

I wanted to give you an update on the progress of the construction of the Charlton parking lot project.

Southcoast Hospitals Group has contracted with JRD Construction Inc. of Assonet for the project. JRD filed with the city for a demolition permit on Monday, April 27, and we hope to have the permit by the end of this week.

You will begin to see fencing erected around the houses over the next few days. The houses are no longer occupied and, once the permit is issued, demolition could begin as early next week.

We will do everything possible to minimize disruptions to you and your neighbors during this process.

When we met earlier this month, there were several questions regarding salvaging and recycling materials. All materials are separated on site for recycling and the contractor has advised us that about 95 percent of the materials will be recycled. In addition, items such as railings, newel posts, hardware, acceptable appliances and plumbing fixtures will be salvaged, unless they are in disrepair.

Once again, I wanted to thank you for your patience during this process. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or concerns.

Sincerely,

- Jim

“Don’t it always seem to go, you don’t know what you have till it’s gone. They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” —Joni Mitchell

Big Yellow Taxi

They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
With a pink hotel, a boutique
And a swinging hot spot
Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got
Till it’s gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot

They took all the trees
Put ‘em in a tree museum
And they charged the people
A dollar and a half just to see ‘em
Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got
Till it’s gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot

Hey farmer farmer
Put away that D.D.T. now
Give me spots on my apples
But leave me the birds and the bees
Please!
Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got
Till it’s gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot

Late last night
I heard the screen door slam
And a big yellow taxi
Took away my old man
Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got
Till it’s gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot

Things are happening quickly at 132 Green Street in Fairhaven, MA, the former home of the Brownell’s where Emma Borden was visiting on that fateful day in 1892.

Today the vinyl siding is nearly complete. In addition, note the plastic corner boards and window frames. The eaves are also made of plastic.

While the house looks lovely from a distance, looks can be deceiving. What we have here is a fine old home coated in modern ANTI-GREEN materials —-in a sense, coated and dipped in plastic.

This renovation is not the restoration promised by the buyer when first purchased. One wonders what the inside will become.

Purists would rather the house remain damaged and untouched than have the house “ruined” in this way. Others may love the color and ooh and ahh at the fresh clean appearance. “Oh, my,” they will say, “vinyl siding is so much easier to maintain!”

Yes, it may be “easier” but it also literally ruins the historical value of a home. What once had class and character and original wooden shingles and corner boards, now is Barbie’s play house.

I wonder if it smells like plastic on the inside of the house . . . .

Many thanks to Chris Richards for the heads up about the changes as they occur!

Last summer as I was driving by the Borden farmhouse in Swansea, I noticed that the front door was open and a work van was parked in the yard. This is the farm that Andrew Borden once owned with his partner Almy, and the families shared the house for some time. Andrew eventually bought out his partner and when Andrew died, the farm house went to daughters Lizzie and Emma Borden.

I stood on the street and took these two shots. I found them most interesting as the inside staircase looks original, as does the hardware on the storage door under the stairs. It is but a glimpse into the life of what once was.

The Literary Hatchet: Lizzie Borden’s Journal of Murder, Mystery & Victorian History is extending its submission deadline by two weeks.

We pay authors!

Please visit the Literary Hatchet website to download your free issues and read about what we want and do not want in the way of content.

New deadline for submissions is May 1, 2009.

The Spring 2009 issue of The Hatchet: Lizzie Borden’s Journal of Murder, Mystery & Victorian History is now available for sale in both subscription (online pdf) and print.

If you want to subscribe, for only $15 per year, to the Online edition, please visit The Hatchet.

If you would like to purchase the print copy, for only $14.99, please visit the sales site for The Hatchet.

A new telling of the Lizzie Borden story appeared today on the Rotten Works blog. The writer, RottenOne, gets the story somewhat right. The basic gist is there, and fairly well told, as far as the truth of the matter is concerned. However, like almost all writers on the case these days, and speakers for that matter, the author makes some egregious errors of fact and substitutes fantastical exaggerations instead of sticking to the real story.

Let’s start with paragraph 2: “Their house was small with no indoor plumbing and no hot running water.” Not true, McGee! Andrew had the water department connect to the house almost as soon as the service was available in his part of town.

This from the Lizzie Borden Quarterly (“Research Discovers an Unknown Side to Andrew J. Borden,” July 1997), “At Andrew Borden’s Second Street home, the connection for city water (applied for under Account No. 223) was made on June 19, 1874 by Cook and Grew, plumbers. The house was outfitted with not one, but two, faucets. Water rates as published by the Fall River Water Board were $5.00 annually for one faucet and $2.50 annually for each additional faucet, thereby resulting in a $7.50 water charge for the Borden residence.”

Paragraph 3: “To try and restore peace Andrew Borden has guests come to the house and has Lizzie spend time with their more affluent relatives. This seems to only make matters worse. But it was during one of these family visits that the crime occurs. After one of the cousins has spent the night and left the house, Abby is upstairs tidying the room. It was while she was cleaning the room that she takes 19 blows to the head. Within a few minutes Andrew Borden comes home because he isn’t feeling well. After lying down for a few minutes he gets 11 blows to the head. Eleven savage blows that completely destroy his face. Both parents are dead within a matter of minutes.”

This is the first time I have heard that Andrew invited people to his house, affluent relatives, to make Lizzie feel better. Source please. And it was not a cousin who arrived the evening before the murders, but Lizzie’s uncle, John Vinnicum Morse, the brother of her deceased mother. While Abby did indeed get whacked 19 times, Andrew’s blow count was ten. The blows did not completely destroy Andrew’s face as the attack was focused on his left side.

Paragraphs 7 & 8: “And then things begin to spiral out of control. Lizzie is taken into custody and questioned. She gives conflicting testimony and defiantly refers to Abby as her step mother, not her mother. Lizzie is arrested and charged with three counts of murder, one for each parent and one for the pair.

During the trial many additional details come to light. Lizzie is said to have tried to buy poison a few days before. She is said to have burned a stained dress. It’s later found Lizzie is questioned without her attorney present and she’s been given sedatives by the doctor who came over to investigate the crime.”

Lizzie was not taken into custody at this time. In fact, she appeared at the Inquest on her own volition, which was held from August 9-11. A warrant had been issued on August 8, but was not served. She appeared without counsel at the Inquest, and was under the influence of morphine, which was being administered by Dr. Bowen. She was not charged with the crimes until after the Grand Jury indicted her on December 2, 1892. Lizzie was thought to have attempted to buy prussic acid the day before the murders, not a few days before.

Paragraph 11: “Undaunted, Lizzie does indeed buy her big house on the hill; a 14 bedroom complete with housekeeper and servants.”

Maplecroft has 14 rooms. Not 14 bedrooms. This is not a mansion, but rather a large house.

Paragraph 12: “Emma, who realizes there will be no peace living with Lizzie decides to take her leave and move out. She moves away and it’s the last time the sisters speak. Lizzie remains alone until her death, never quite achieving the status she craves.”

We have no evidence that Lizzie and Emma never spoke again. They owned property together and had later business dealings after the time Emma moved out. Lizzie never married, but I wouldn’t say she remained alone until her death. She surrounded herself with friends. She had servants living in her home. And I am not sure just what status Lizzie craved . . . and how anyone can know this enigmatic woman’s mind so well as to state this.

Like I said, this is one of the more accurate descriptions of the case! Mostly the story is well told and thoughtful. It is a good attempt at the case, but one that, in the end, furthers the myths of this case in ways that do not contribute to the scholarship.

The next meeting of the Fall River History Club is on Wednesday, April 15, 2009, but NOT at the Fall River Public Library.

Instead, the club will convene at Bristol Community College to hear a lecture presented by Philip T. Slivia, Phd.D., and Jay J. Lambert, J.D., as part of the series of Bristol County commemorating the 150th Anniversary of the Massachusetts Superior Court.

The talk is titled “Rights of Labor and Capital in the Gilded Age: The Granite Mills Fire.”

TIME: April 15, 2009, at 6:30PM.
PLACE: Bristol Community College, 777 Elsbree Street, Fall River, MA. Health Services Building C, Room C111.

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The lecture will review the labor conditions and issues, together with the relationship of capital and labor in the period of Fall River’s post-Civil War industrial expansion, with a focus on the most tragic example of the consequences.

Songs were written about this disaster. Here are the lyrics to one such tune.

The Granite Mill Fire

Was in Fall River City
When the people was burned and killed,
In a cotton manufactory
Called as the Granite Mill.
At seven o’clock the firebells rang
But oh, it was too late,
The flames they were fast spreading
And at a rapid rate.

They were men and women there
And children too, I’m told,
Who might have been saved from out of the flames
If the truth was only known.
But oh, the villains that locked thc doors
And told them to keep still,
It was the bosses and overseers
That burning Granite Mill.

The first scene was a touching one
From a maid so young in years,
She was standing by a window and
Her eyes were filled with tears.
She cried, ” Oh, save me! Save me! ”
She called her mother’s name,
But her mother could not save her
And she fell back in the flame.

The next scene was a horrible one
Just as it caught my eye.
They were leaping from a window
From up so very high,
And the only means of their escape
Was sliding down a rope,
And just as they were half way down
The burning strands they broke.

Christ, Christ, what a horrible mess,
They were mangled, burned and killed,
Six stories high, and falling from
The burning Granite Mill.
But I hope their spirits has fled
To a better place far still,
Up high, up high, up in the sky
Above the Granite Mill.

From Songs and Ballads from Nova Scotia, Creighton Collected from Tom Henneberry, who learned this song in the 1890s, says it describes a fire in Fall River, New York, of about that time. The locking-in aspect is reminiscent of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire in New York City. RG

Link to lyric site.

The most recent issue of The Hatchet: Lizzie Borden’s Journal of Murder, Mystery & Victorian History has a wonderful interview with wunderkind director Cameron Munson.

Cameron is the director of the new short film about the Borden case, called Bordenia, which just wrapped up shooting in Lancaster, PA.

And you are the very first to get a sneak preview of the new film!

This film is based on the Borden case and is placed in the modern day. The production value is remarkable and I am very much looking forward to its release.

Here is a link to the YouTube page if the film below does not play for some reason.

Thanks Cameron!

A blogger named Creepy Hallows claims to have channelled Lizzie Borden, after much effort. This is not a spoof site or does the writer present themselves as anything other than serious.

This is an interesting read and worth looking at. While I do not subscribe to the idea that they did, in fact, contact Lizzie, I did think that the insight the author gained by his or her concentrated efforts is extremely interesting. I especially liked the idea that Lizzie had “acted out” in inappropriate ways well before 1892. The details the author presents of that acting out are most interesting.

I go back and forth about Lizzie’s guilt in this case. My leanings these days are that she is innocent. So this psychic reading, to me, does not plug into my reality of the story. However, I present it to you for your judgment and reading pleasure.

Please read the entire posting here.

Here is a portion:

The tides of bitter resentment turned to all-out hatred around her early 20s which slowly evolved from doing petty annoyances to upset her step-mother to indifference in her late 20s when she became more thoughtful of driving a wedge between her step-mother and father. By that point she thought it better noone be happy if she wasn’t going to be. Of course by this time Andrew had shown years of favor to Abby and her family over Lizzie and Emma (her sister) and Lizzie being the intelligent woman she was, was offended.

It led to her doing things that would cause family arguments because no one could decidedly say who did them… like moving objects around the house, hiding things Andrew or Abby needed, cracking dishes over heat, placing soiled linens with the fresh ones, and so on. This caused a rift between the parents and the girls rather than causing the rift between Andrew and Abby which is what Lizzie wanted.

By the time Lizzie’s 30th birthday rolled around she was so distraught, exhausted and mentally stonewalled to a point of being devoid of emotion, she came to a conclusion that seemed logical in her, a warped perception of what reality should be, to be rid of her step-mother and father. She knew that the longer Andrew lived and the older Lizzie and Emma became the chances her father would leave his fortune to Abby’s family increased. Since God had not made her a male heir she felt she was sanctioned, by the fact of her abuse, in killing Andrew and Abby. She would inherit the estate of her father as she felt was right, she had earned every penny and she would do right by the fortune.

Her decision was made months before the actual murders and she had tried, unsuccessfully, to kill her step-mother before. Abby had leaned from the second story bedroom window while attempting to clean the glass and seeing her Lizzie had thought about pushing her out, but was nervous. The second time Abby was in the kitchen and Lizzie was going to stab her with the cutting knife, but they were interrupted. The third time she poisoned Andrew and Abby with polishing liquid, but since she was afraid they would taste the chemical in the food she only put a little which turned out to make them sick, not dead. By this time her fears and anxiety of committing the murders was dissolved and she was more focused.

When the morning of August 4th dawned she was steady. Abby tended the guest room and Lizzie knew that if she behaved just as any other day that there would be no reason for Abby to suspect anything. She walked evenly, with a regular stride coming behind Abby for the first and subsequent blows. She admitted that once she started and the blade sliced the skull it unleashed all the bottled rage she had supressed and when she meant to only strike once it was followed by 19 more blows. She removed her shoes, lifted her skirt and bunched it around her thighs and went immediately to the basement where she washed her shoes and removed the apron over her skirt. She rinsed the hatchet and set it on the second to top stair. There were little blood droplets that went through the apron to the skirt and she tried to smudge them out with water. She wrapped the apron tightly and tucked it next to the wash basin in the basement. She recomposed herself and waited for her father.

By the time Andrew came home she had recomposed herself and Andrew lay down to rest after a day in the heat. Lizzie had greeted him and offered him something to drink but rather than leave the room to get him a refreshment she returned with the hatchet. She said it was easier the second time knowing what it was going to be like and took it to her father’s face. I really felt like her attack against Andrew was far more personal that the one with Abby. She wanted to see her father’s face when she hit him and that in me caused a great tension around my sternum as I was hearing this from her.

Creepy Hallows.

According to Medium Georgia O’Connor, Lizzie Borden did not take an axe and give her mother 40 whacks. Nor her father 41. It was a known person to victim Andrew Borden, a man named Earl Matthews.

She also says that Andrew was first hit in a doorway, then hit again (she says stabbed) on the couch, and died on the floor. The blood was cleaned up. Also, that Andrew died first, as his wife was not home when it occurred.

On Nov. 15th 2008 renowned Medium Georgia OConnor , The Spirit Messenger, was presenting Graveside Chats as part of her Meet The Medium series for The Heritage Hunters of Saratoga County NY at the Ballston Spa Library. One of the audience members was a relative of Lizzie Borden. Lizzie came through and told Georgia the details of the famous murder, that she was innocent and also the name of her parents killer. Georgias website is MeetTheMedium.com

Link.

The Spring 2009 issue of The Hatchet: Lizzie Borden’s Journal of Murder, Mystery & Victorian History is now online for your reading pleasure. Subscribers log in now here!

This issue is chocked full of great articles!

We have a grand piece on the story of Spritism by Kat Koorey

A stunning work by Shelley Dziedzic about the Victorian Celebration of Death.

An interview with Wunderkind director Cameron Munson on his new Lizzie Borden film.

A new tale to tell about the Emma Borden photograph I found and detailed in the last issue of The Hatchet, called Emma Borden: The Plot Thickens.

A truly inspired work of fiction by David Marshall James, entitled Mesdemoiselles of French Street in “The Adventures of the Green Cape”

An important essay by Melissa Allen titled “When My Fire Burns Low”

A great work by Denise Noe on the Bible Verses spoken at Lizzie Borden’s Funeral, and

The final installment of Douglas Walter’s works From the Compositor’s Bench (we will miss him dearly).

And that is not all! We have 2 new poems by Michael Brimbau, 1 by Brenda Kern, 1 by Melissa Allen, 1 by Aurora Lewis, and 2 old poems by A.L. Bixby.

In addition, we have super fabulous Sherry Chapman pieces for your amusement: Bridget’s Kitchen, and Dear Abby.

So if you want to subscribe at the low low price of just $15 per year, for all three issues ONLINE, please visit HERE!

It will be a few weeks before the print copy will be available. So Online is the only way to go for now!