The Hatchet is Available in Print
The proofing process has been completed and the new issue of The Hatchet: A Journal of Lizzie Borden & Victorian America is now for sale! Please place your order through this link.
The Spring 2011 issue is chocked full of great features! 118 pages and only $16.99!
History Hounds
On April 27, 2011, I sat down with Michael Martins and Dennis Binette for their first lengthy interview on the writing of Parallel Lives: A Social History of Lizzie A. Borden and Her Fall River. It was not the first time we had discussed this city or its most famous citizen, as we have had ongoing conversations about these subjects on hundreds of occasions.
By Stefani Koorey, Ph.D.
Apprentice to a Shoeshine Boy
As a family, we were always changing residences. It almost appeared as if we were continuously being rudely asked to vacate the premises. An eager landlord, who desired the apartment for a relative, may have dictated eviction. Other times, it was because the rent had become too dear. On a few occasions, Father obtained a job that was too far to travel to on a daily basis, and we had to move once again, north, to places like Lowell, Chelsea, and Bellerica. But, we always returned to Fall River.
By Michael Brimbau
Henry’s Fountains
One cannot talk of the saloons in Fall River without giving mention to Dr. Henry D. Cogswell. Cogswell, a dentist and philanthropist, who made his fortune in real estate and mining in California during the gold rush, was a zealous crusader for the temperance movement in the late 19th century.
By Michael Brimbau
The Agitated Elocutionist: A Lizzie Borden, Girl Detective Mystery
Throughout most of the summer of 1876, I had seen precious little of my favorite cousin, Miss Lizzie Borden of
Second Street. My family held her in great esteem for her triumphant handling the previous summer of the Case of the Purloined Curio. That regrettable incident had involved the murder of my father by a charlatan spiritualist and a deranged mill owner.
By Richard Behrens
Mesdemoiselles of French Street in “The Forgotten Note”
At that juncture, the three teenagers, who were walking home from school to their respective
residences on French Street, approached Maplecroft, the home of Miss Lizbeth Borden, who presently
greeted them from her front walkway, down which she was proceeding toward her chauffeured Pierce-Arrow,
parked at the curb. “Hello, young ladies,” she waved to them. “Fine weather we’re having, isn’t it?”
By David Marshall James
The World of Jack the Ripper
Everyone has heard of the name Jack the Ripper: that legendary hooligan who upset Victorian-era London in 1888 with his atrocious murders of at least five prostitutes in ten weeks. He struck by night, ripping these women open and handling their innards, displaying their bodies according to some kind of private ritual fantasy, and escaping without detection through the lurid, dark streets into history.
By Kat Koorey
Denise Noe’s Lizzie Whittlings: The Glorious Story of Fall River’s Battleship Cove
Fall River, Massachusetts, is home to an inlet that proudly bears the appropriate name Battleship Cove because it is the site of a wondrous outdoor naval museum displaying various ships and a submarine that are historically important.