Kat Kooreyby Kat Koorey
First published in August/September, 2005, Volume 2, Issue 4, The Hatchet: Journal of Lizzie Borden Studies.
“’Guilty–No! No!’ Lizzie Borden’s Sister Breaks 20-Year Silence’”
pronounced the headline of the Boston Sunday Post 13 April 1913. Citizens of Massachusetts were finally going to hear from the beleaguered sister of the infamous Lizzie A. Borden, as “the first declaration to the outside world that either sister had made regarding that most notable murder mystery–a butchery on which the faintest light is yet to be shed.”
Upon reading, it sounded too good to be true, the quotes too trite and self-serving, and the whole atmosphere of the piece stereotypically melodramatic. It was hard to believe that the elderly Emma, “white-haired” and “gentle-faced” would actually give a despised upstart Boston reporter an interview this late in her life.
Some Borden scholars of today believe without question that the interview occurred, but some have been skeptical. There had to have been a precipitating factor involved which would spur Emma to speak now, and not ever before or since. A search to find a reason seemed to be indicated if this interview should stand as real and not just more Lizzie-lore.
The headlines in Len Rebello’s book, Lizzie Borden Past & Present, give a clue. The week prior to the publication of the Edwin J. Maguire article “’Guilty–No! No!’” there was listed the headline “Lizzie Borden Twenty Years After The Tragedy,” Boston Sunday Herald (Special Feature), 6 April 1913, by Gertrude Stevenson. Rebello’s annotation to this citation is: “Lizzie’s life at Maplecroft is explained in detail.” This was worth pursuing because if Lizzie had given an interview the earlier Sunday, it could explain the possibility that Emma might have felt she needed to justify, refute, or otherwise comment upon what was printed and probably had read. Many years earlier, Lizzie had given an interview while in jail, so there was precedent. This article on Lizzie published on the 6th would have to have been an excessive breach of privacy for Emma to finally break her silence. And so we find it was, although this time there was no interview, as Lizzie Borden’s servant refused the reporter at the door. Ms. Stevenson was told that Miss Borden “never sees strangers.” The article was written and printed regardless.
Consequently, the following week the older sister Emma came to Lizzie’s defense, against her own past habit of non-comment, and it seems she did so with much grief and frustration, as the words finally tumbled out. The interview with Emma was probably brief on her part–a few choice phrases–and possibly padded and sensationalized for public titillation. The core part of the article, based on Emma’s words, is rather smaller than the whole piece and buried within it, while about half the writing is background and descriptive analysis. Googling the byline writer Edwin J. Maguire, and searching two different newspaper archive sites and American biographical pages, reveals no other record of his name as a newsman. If “Edwin J. Maguire” shows up in any other future search, that information will be imparted.
The phrases attributed to Emma probably did originate with her, and a significant point is that though Emma had been living apart from her sister for almost a decade, exiling herself to Providence, she did return in 1912 to Fall River to stay with the Misses Buck, which is where the reporter Maguire claims he found her and collected her comments early in the spring of 1913. Mr. Rebello gives a time frame of Emma’s whereabouts from 1905 to her death in Newmarket in 1927, so it is possible she allowed the encounter at 114 Prospect Street, Fall River, the Buck sister’s home.
The news item begins with a provocative quote, implying that Emma’s first response is to a question not printed: “Queer? Yes Lizzie is queer. But guilty on that terrible charge made against her–no–emphatically, No! Time and again she has avowed her innocence to me, and I believe her.” Though there had been a continuing alienation between the sisters, blood ties were still strong and made it necessary that she make a dignified “declaration to the outside world,” in an attempt to describe what it had been like to be a sister of Lizzie Borden through all the years of outside scrutiny. The previous week, it seems, Lizzie Borden had been cruelly maligned in the papers, and Emma might have felt she must explain.
Emma says that after her return from Fairhaven on that fateful day in 1892, Lizzie was “very much affected” and proclaimed that she would never dream of “such an awful thing” as killing their father and stepmother. Emma states that Lizzie has “avowed her innocence” to her “time and again” after the murders, “after her arrest and during her trial,” even “after acquittal” while they were living together at the French Street house. Emma’s explanation of Lizzie’s reaction and protestations of innocence could be in response to the charge in the previous week’s article that Lizzie had never shown a real emotion and had maintained “the silence of a Sphinx” when what the world sought, at the time, was a statement from her or at least a plea for understanding. One of Emma’s reasons for believing her sister was that Lizzie had “affection for dumb animals,” and a heart that could never have committed the awful deed. The article the previous Sunday had dwelled upon this softer side of Lizzie, describing her dogs, pet canaries, and the squirrels which romped upon her shoulders.
Emma went on to describe “despite our estrangement, I am going to do my duty in answering the cruel slanders that have been made against her both in public print and by gossiping persons who seem to take delight in saying cruel things about her.” The earlier article seemed to rely heavily on neighborhood anecdotes–exposing years of controlled displeasure at Lizzie’s actions and how her real estate choices had impacted them. In Emma’s interview she explains the disposition of the French Street property. She might have felt compelled to mention the particulars about the land and the sister’s original agreement, yet did not take any of the burden of the neighbor’s dissatisfaction with the way Lizzie had handled her further acquisitions. According to the earlier item, Lizzie had a predilection for buying up lots in the area around Maplecroft, and putting up fences. Emma seems to deny any responsibility for Lizzie’s decisions about the property which she had solely acquired, and distances herself from the matter.
In her interview, Emma mentions her split from Lizzie and describes it as happening after counsel by Rev. Buck (although it was thirteen months after he died that she left). It was her sisterly feelings and a promise to her dying mother that she would “always watch over ‘baby Lizzie’ ” which kept her “staunchly” by her sister, “safeguarding” her and which “compelled” her to do her duty by Lizzie by paying for half the trial expenses. “I did my duty at the time of the trial, and I am still going to do it in defending my sister even though circumstances have separated us.” She recalls her dead mother and her own (on-going) self-sacrifice and breaks down, overcome with grief. Emma sounds like a perpetually suffering martyr, though she bears it all in memory of her mother. It is a mystery how Emma could accurately comment on Lizzie’s life after their separation. She must have somehow kept in touch with those who would know the details.
After Emma pulls herself together, she again mentions “the unjust stories that have appeared in print,” bringing up the yearly review of the case which had been published locally on the anniversary of the crime. She explains Lizzie’s friendly relationship with Nance O’Neil, the real amount of their fortune as being less than publicized, rates her father as not “niggardly,” and notes that both sisters are sure there are flowers on their father’s grave every Memorial Day.
At this point in the interview Emma is quoted as saying: “Some of the neighbors in and around French Street who have criticized Lizzie so freely have not treated her as fair as they might in certain things–matters of business I mean.” This comment especially harkens back to the previous week’s news article which was uncomplimentary of Lizzie’s strained relations with her neighbors and judged Lizzie to be at fault. Emma refers to “an unkind world [that] has unrelentingly persecuted [Lizzie].” Her comments seem to blame anyone other than her sister for Lizzie’s perpetual difficulties. Reporter Stevenson’s article distinctly pointed to the anniversary stories in the newspapers as being a form of social punishment of the acquitted Lizzie. Stevenson revealed the friendship between Lizzie and Nance and implied that once the actress found out who her friend really was, she dropped her. The article described the Second Street environment under Andrew Borden’s regime as being “of extreme simplicity” where one meal was merely “crackers and milk.” Statements made by the reporter Stevenson about the situation of the current family fortune and criticism of her father would almost certainly get a rise out of Emma. The ultimate insult to her character would have been the claim made that Emma had finally “deserted” Lizzie. These latter two points could not have been calculated more cleverly or effectively to finally pry a statement out of poor weary Emma.
Gertrude Stevenson, who managed to write in great depth and detail about Lizzie without even meeting her, was the appropriate person to write this Herald story on “Lizzie Borden Twenty Years After The Tragedy,” which probably forced the real interview out of Emma Borden the following week to the benefit of Maguire, the Post, and hungry readers. Stevenson’s background in newspaper authorship included the close-up study of famous and infamous women. Her interests, or at least her assignments that same year, included probing features on such eminent women of the age as Katherine Tingley, an active educational reformer and Marilla Ricker, “the first woman to announce her candidacy for Governor of New Hampshire in 1910.” In 1915, Stevenson’s name was prominent as the author of “A Novelization of Alice Bradley’s Play”– The Governor’s Lady. It appeared in diverse newspapers, one being the Mountain Democrat of Placerville, California in May of that year.
By 1916, her association with crime stories starring a woman as defendant landed her on the witness stand in the case adjudging Mrs. Mohr and two “negro” co-conspirators for the murder of her husband, Dr. C. Franklin Mohr, of Newport, Rhode Island. At this time, Stevenson was characterized as now writing for the Boston Journal. Because of her legitimate journalistic background, it seems she just might be an honestly reliable source on Lizbeth at Maplecroft, barring the occasional factual error with which this case abounds. Edmund Pearson, writing in 1927, was impressed enough that he excerpted several paragraphs of Stevenson’s article in his own book Murder at Smutty Nose, in the chapter titled “The Bordens: A Postscript.” He decided, however, to give a word of caution to his readers that “The writer…expressed herself rather more emphatically than I should have done. My information did not lead me to believe that the ‘ostracism’ [of Lizzie] was so severe or so complete as this [depicted in Stevenson]. What may have been true in 1913, may, of course, have changed at the end of more than ten years. It is not a fact, to-day, that all of her friends have left her; and while she is not often seen in public, she is by no means a complete recluse.”
Any summary of the Borden case, and any light shown upon the dark corners and barred windows of the characters within such a story, would naturally lead to some slight errors, embellishments of fact, and exaggerations by any writer brave enough to shine that light–including Mr. Pearson of all people. At least Pearson admits that a decade could make a difference in how these remaining lives were lived and perceived, so he might barely be able to imagine what students of the crime would have to endure in their search for the real story over 90 years after Gertrude Stevenson’s attempt.
Note After:
The second citation in Rebello, page 559, accidently gives The Boston Post, 13 April 1913 as the origin of the Stevenson article, whereas that is the citation for the Emma Interview, “Guilty –No! No!” item. The error shows twice on that page. Consequently, it was perpetuated in the Terence Duniho article “All Things Swift,” on the LABVM/L website, where he gives reference to the Boston Post rather than the Boston Sunday Herald. Mr. Rebello has been contacted and agrees this discrepancy in his book should be pointed out.
Works Cited:
Maguire, Edwin J. “Guilty – No! No! Lizzie Borden’s Sister Breaks 20 – Year Silence, Tells the Sunday Post of Past and Present Relations with Lizzie.” Boston Sunday Post 13 April 1913.
Pearson, Edmund. “The Bordens: A Postscript.” Murder at Smutty Nose, And Other Murders. NY: Doubleday, 1927.
Rebello, Leonard. Lizzie Borden Past & Present. Fall River: Al-Zach Press, 1999.
Stevenson, Gertrude. “Lizzie Borden Twenty Years After The Tragedy.” Boston Sunday Herald 6 April 1913.
