Lizzie's Looks and Suitors

phineas · Post by **phineas** » Fri Aug 22, 2014 1:06 pm

I don't find Lizzie unattractive at all, nor Emma. Photos of that time period show some hard looking women who managed to marry. Why not the Borden girls? Lizzie was still young at the time of the murders (though clearly into spinsterhood by the expectations of the day) and I believe she had lustrous hair, beautiful eyes and was clearly very stylish. She was keen on the arts, loved to read. She was also known to have a wealthy father....where were the suitors? Was it really that Andrew refused to allow her any? As a businessman, you'd think he would welcome fobbing off the daughters and having fewer mouths to feed. Was there shame attached for him in having unmarried daughters back then?

Wasn't the custom that a suitor came to call, so Lizzie would not needed balls or parties necessarily to carry on a romance? You knew people in your home town, went to school and church with them, and when you came of age, a male indicated interest by asking if he could call. Could Andrew have simply refused, or did no one show interest...any thoughts?

They say Lizzie had a wide lower face and jaw but mostly it looks round to me. Her lips are normal sized, she has no pockmarks - it looks like she had lovely skin. I think she is relatively pretty. What do you think of Lizzie's looks?

irina · Post by **irina** » Fri Aug 22, 2014 1:51 pm

Romance and marriage in those days wasn't what it is today. There were many serious considerations. Lizzie may also have been hampered by her father's wealth as great wealth can attract suitors that are fortune hunters. I have wondered if Lizzie did have suitors who were rejected by Andrew for this reason, or who she later found, were after the family fortune and not her charms. On the other hand it seems certain families intermarried over the decades in FR so a further question which I mean less crude than it will sound is, why didn't anyone within these families want to marry her. It seems a dynastic marriage between Lizzie backed by Andrew's fortune and another wealthy family would have been appealing to all sides. Within the family circles the chance of a fortune hunter latching on would probably be less.

Another consideration is that people did not enter into marriage as easily as people do today. From the female perspective there was fear of an abusive husband one would be stuck with for life. Child birth was a killer. Some women did not want to marry because they did not feel they could survive the ordeal. Among us women on the forum we can probably think of women we have known who would have died in child birth in Lizzie's time. Probably men on the forum could also think of women in this category.

Possibly Lizzie wanted to experience more of life before she committed herself to a lifetime of being a wife. Once married her ability to define her life would have been curtailed to the realm of her husband's existence. Under questioning, about whether or not her parents had a happy marriage, Lizzie says it was as happy as she had the ability to know. I feel this was a kind of tortured answer that showed Lizzie was at best ambivalent about married life. She knew how tightly her father held the purse strings and how Abby had to scrimp. There would be no reason for Lizzie to believe she could do better.

phineas · Post by **phineas** » Fri Aug 22, 2014 2:58 pm

Those are great points Irina. I have wondered whether Lizzie viewed marriage as a possible escape from her stultifying life and if she was frustrated that avenue was closed to her, either by Andrew or a lack of interest in her. For a woman of her class, marriage was the only escape possible and with no education, she was well and truly stuck. Andrew as a sharp businessman would have been on the lookout for fortune hunters and a dynastic marriage with a distant Borden cousin would have made sense. I wonder why it didn't happen. From some of the comments regarding the mental health of the family taken by police, perhaps they really were viewed locally as off kilter and maybe that made the girls untouchable. Lizzie's tart comments make me think she could be sharp and outspoken in daily life and while not a total disqualifier, it might give a Victorian male pause.

irina · Post by **irina** » Fri Aug 22, 2014 3:22 pm

It is possible Lizzie just wanted more out of life and then was considered too old for marriage. As I mentioned in other places my mom had a professional career which made marriage and child birth~me~happen when she was almost 40. My first mother-in-law, born in 1893 travelled the world and married later in life. Possibly in a different time this sort of thing would have been Lizzie's choice.

I also have a theory about sexuality in general which applies to gay or straight. I believe there are two extremes of sexuality; people who strongly need physical relationships and those who don't care. In the middle are many average people with average desires. Those who craved the physical relationship and wanted to maintain reputations in Lizzie's day, needed to marry, perhaps as soon as possible.

I have thought about this a lot when modern writers and researchers try to label various historic figures as gay, including Lizzie. One historic person who has been extensively looked at is author Louisa May Alcott. She seemed to feel closer to females and had friendships with men. She said she never felt strongly enough about any man to get married and her relationships with females were more fulfilling. That doesn't mean she was a lesbian. An alternative thought is she did not have a strong sexual desire one way or the other and chose not to marry. Possibly Lizzie (and Emma) fit into that category.

Curryong · Post by **Curryong** » Fri Aug 22, 2014 7:40 pm

I agree with you, irina. Florence Nightingale, for instance, has been labelled as probably lesbian, because of her close relationships with female cousins etc. Close female relationships in Victorian times were often expressed in flowery language, with overtones we would call almost romantic in expression.

As far as Lizzie is concerned, I have never thought she was gay. Her relationship with Nance O' Neill is always pointed to by those who think she may have been, on very little evidence. The friendship with a well known actress always adds that little frisson of scandal, of Lizzie stepping over the boundaries, in the Lizzie Borden story. In reality the close friendship lasted only two years or so, and I think it was all tied up with Lizzie's love of the theatre. She was an avid theatre-goer later in life.

Why didn't Lizzie marry? I think there are probably several factors. Many of the Borden sisters' friends and acquaintances were single. Although most had little money and had to work for their living, they were surviving, many were probably quite happy and I'm sure several revelled in their independence. As we've discussed on another thread New England women seemed to be a breed apart, really.

Also, as I've said on several occasions, Lizzie and Emma had limited social lives. Andrew's refusal to do much socialising led to a very limited circle for his wife and daughters. Lizzie seems to have taken up Church activities in an effort to combat this. She does appear to have been a very reserved character with those she didn't know well, and both she and Andrew were probably quite cautious about possible fortune hunters. That would have added a further barrier.

Lizzie may have wanted to marry when she was in her twenties, but given her limited opportunities the right man just didn't cross her path. By the time of the murders she may well have been resigned to spinsterhood, in a way women in their thirties of a later generation (especially college-educated women) were not. At least she wasn't facing a future of scrimping and saving and relying on male relatives' (brothers etc) bounty for the rest of her life, as so many unmarried women of the era had to.

debbiediablo · Post by **debbiediablo** » Sat Aug 23, 2014 6:41 am

In the day of swooning Victorian women who, I doubt that either of the Borden sisters fit in. Andrew might've considered the men who would've been attracted to them to be gold-diggers or the fathers of the men they were attracted to might've considered them gold-diggers. Neither of them were beautiful enough in the classic sense of the times (although Emma came closer) to be desirable regardless of money or parentage. Plus, I wonder if there wasn't something odd enough about the family to put off suitors. Back then, families where none of the daughter married were not so uncommon, and I think it speaks to either how the girls were reared or to their development as adults.

Curryong · Post by **Curryong** » Sun Aug 24, 2014 1:14 am

Emma seems to have been regarded as a born old maid, quiet and faded. Facially she doesn't seem to resemble Lizzie much at all.

debbiediablo · Post by **debbiediablo** » Mon Aug 25, 2014 2:06 am

Marriage was dangerous business back then. Women died in childbirth or afterward due to infection. Having a less than happy childhood might leave a woman less predisposed to marriage and motherhood especially if the woman didn't need a man for economic survival. Maybe Lizzie and Emma were happy spinsters except for the part about wanting a telephone, electricity, indoor plumbing, a house on the hill, a driver whose good looking, a cook, a huge library, fine antiques, more opportunities to pretend shoplifting was more like having a no-limit Mastercard...

Curryong · Post by **Curryong** » Mon Aug 25, 2014 3:02 am

Setting aside the murders for a moment, (say that Andrew had had a heart attack instead over that month's food bill being up by 10 cents and expired on the spot), I can't imagine anything more dull and boring than the lives his daughters had lived up to that moment. With all due respects to Fall River, I shouldn't think there was anything overly stimulating in the community life of the town.

At least if the family lived somewhere like Boston, New York, Washington or London there would be opportunities to see heads of state or royalty and leading politicians, works of art in fine museums, matinees at theatres involving leading actors of the day, etc.

No opportunity then either to hop in the car and enjoy the freedom of the road. They had to wait for an invitation from family friends who would chaperone them while they were away. I suppose marriage might appeal to some unmarried women just so they could get away from the drabness of life in the parental home.

debbiediablo · Post by **debbiediablo** » Mon Aug 25, 2014 9:07 am

We're all ambivalent about everything so it was a little of this and a little of that. The sisters did get away from the drabness of the parent home but Lizzie clung to Fall River no matter what its shortcomings, including a number of people who thought her a murderess.

irina · Post by **irina** » Mon Aug 25, 2014 10:34 am

The group of women Lizzie vacationed with in Marion consisted of a high percentage of school teachers. We commented on this before. It implies to me that Lizzie sought the most intelligent company she could find. I am the product of small towns; the sort where working class parents are desperately afraid their children will become smarter than them through public education. Knowledge and learning are considered "uppity". If a person wants more of the world it is found in books and whatever one can find in the area. At least in our day there is TV, ways to enjoy music...all the way to the internet today.

phineas · Post by **phineas** » Mon Aug 25, 2014 3:46 pm

A young Lizzie would have been so much happier in a larger city with more attractions. At the least, the Hill would not have so dominated society and she might have been less conscious of her one-down position in a city with many different social worlds. I will throw a wrench in and say I think Lizzie's obsession with social position would have made a spinster life a terrible fate and I don't think she viewed it with equanimity. Married women had a position in the world, the spinster was on the low rung and often a subject of pity and contempt. I can't see Lizzie not wanting the freedoms and entitlements of marriage with her own establishment (and I say freedoms of marriage advisedly!). While she would have answered to a husband, not Andrew, Lizzie might have been such a strong personality that she could have cowed him or, figured that she would, in her imagination. I think spinster to Lizzie would have been a real comedown in the world, fine for Emma but second rate for Lizzie, along with the rest of her despised, second rate existence - 92, no running water, no telephone etc. She wanted and had the best for herself as soon as she could afford it: in Victorian America marriage was 'best' and unmarried was 'second best' with its subtext: unwanted.

Of course Lizzie would put the best face on it she could - more time for church work, temperance work! I'm not sure how much choice entered into it - the custom of the day was to marry and not for love but necessity. Granted Lizzie didn't have the necessity of marrying to drive her, but she doesn't strike me as the sort of independent thinker who would reject marriage for philosophic or practical reasons. She was at a dead-end with decades of the same monotony to come, with her chance for marital escape probably gone save for a widower (Lizzie was never going to leave town and become a schoolteacher or be a mail order bride out West or any adventurous plan). From here, it looks like a pretty good incentive to change your situation.

I realize many of Lizzie's friends were spinster ladies but that's how it would be, no? She would not socialize with married women, but women in the same circumstances as herself. As soon as a woman married, she moved into a different social realm and left single ladies behind, to be seen infrequently, however warmly greeted.

Curryong · Post by **Curryong** » Mon Aug 25, 2014 6:34 pm

Yes, Phineas, your view is quite correct. In the ethos of the day Lizzie and Emma were failures. To be a married woman, in charge of your own establishment, was the height of ambition for most young women and their mothers. If they didn't achieve this then they were often regarded as second-rate. You can see this in the jokey references to 'surplus women' in the newspapers of the day, and this attitude lingered on until the 1950's in some quarters, women's magazines for example, with articles about brides and 'how to capture a husband' etc.

Irina, I didn't mean to imply that small towns are second-rate. I come from one myself and I have very nostalgic and happy memories of the little resort. You can tell, though, that Lizzie loved to travel, for instance, and memories of her European trip stayed with her for the rest of her life. She felt 'down', as anyone would, when she was returning home after that trip and made several remarks to that effect to Anna Borden and others. I'm always surprised she didn't take another European holiday. Perhaps Emma wouldn't go with her and she couldn't find anyone else.

Lizzie (and Emma probably) would have grabbed every opportunity to broaden their minds, including intelligent conversation with their friends. What I was getting at in my previous post however, is that, given the very restrictive and rather miserable life led at home (Lizzie spent most of her time in her room) a large capital city would, of necessity, provide more stimuli than a small provincial centre.

It's not like today, where, with Internet and TV you can see events as they happen on the other side of the world and can speak to different people across continents. People are inevitably switched on to the world in a way they just couldn't be in the 19th century.

Books are all very well, and no doubt Lizzie did feed her imagination when she read about different people, places and things, but in a way nothing compares to actually experiencing them for yourself if you can. (I say that as someone who loves books, my home is overflowing with them, and as a voracious reader since the age of three!)

Nowadays, for example, we can listen to glorious music from the best musicians from a variety of sources, from C.D's to radios to YouTube on the Internet etc. That just wasn't available in Lizzie's day. The very primitive phonographs of the time ran on either electricity (No 92 was without it) or, in the case of later portable ones, a sort of clockwork mechanism. Not very satisfactory, and I don't even know if the electrical ones were commercially available to the general public in 1892.

I don't mean that Lizzie shouldn't be attached to Fall River. She obviously was, she stayed there all her life.

If, however, she wanted to hear lectures by famed authors or academics, see great art, hear great music or go to see leading theatricals of the day, she would have had to travel to Boston or New York. Leading musicians, acting companies etc would have rarely visited Fall River, and in those days art galleries were quite restricted outside the major cities. In later life we know that Lizzie went regularly to these major centres.

John Watson · Post by **John Watson** » Mon Aug 25, 2014 7:08 pm

I find it a bit odd that no one has mentioned the obvious - that Lizzie simply wasn't interested in men. Throughout her lifetime, she seems to have preferred the company of other women. Nowhere can one find any solid evidence that she ever had a male suitor or that she ever encouraged any man who might have shown an interest. In fact, the only relationship that ever seemed to matter to her was with with the actress Nance O'Neal, and she chose to pursue that friendship even to the point of driving her sister out of the house. There's insufficient evidence to state pointblank that Lizzie was a lesbian, at least not in a sexual connotation, but there's also no sign that she ever regretted not having a boyfriend or husband. Lizzie was described in unflattering terms during her trial, some observers saying she had a masculine appearance or hard-looking face. In a few photos she looks passingly pretty, though never demure. In others, she looks less attractive and one can discern a "hardness" in her features. However, as has been noted, her appearance was not off-putting, certainly not to the point where potential suitors would find her too unattractive to pursue - yet none have ever been identified.

Curryong · Post by **Curryong** » Mon Aug 25, 2014 8:29 pm

Hello, John Watson! Views of people's looks are very subjective aren't they? As far as the newspapers at the time were concerned, they may well have been driven by their own agendas in portraying Lizzie as 'hard' and 'masculine'. She was after all, a female charged with a particularly brutal murder. I have a copy of Rebello's book beside me as I'm typing now, and in that book there is a small sketch drawn by a newspaper artist at the time of the trial that depicts what I would describe as a 60 year old harridan! It bears no resemblance to Lizzie at all!

It's true that Lizzie does have a strong jaw and some photos show a firm expression. It's not an overly feminine face. However, Lizzie did have fine eyes, beautiful hair and a sense of style in her clothing.

We don't know whether she disliked men or not. She was extremely reserved apparently, and probably cautious of fortune hunters. In her day, too, women just couldn't go chasing after young men if they liked them. They had to wait for the young man to make the approach. Similarly, at a time when close friendships between young unmarried people of the opposite sex were firmly discouraged, having friends of the same sex was a good option!

I've long held too, that Andrew Borden's anti-social ways restricted his daughters' chances of meeting young men at parties, dinner parties, balls etc. which was the way the sexes mingled in those days (besides church groups.)

As far as Nance O' Neill is concerned the jury is out on that one (pun intended!) It's clear that the two women enjoyed a close friendship. Lizzie loved the theatre and it may well have been the glamour of this that was the attraction. The close friendship only lasted for about two years. When Nance's home went into foreclosure in 1905 Lizzie didn't come lumbering to the rescue with a welcome cheque. It's not known why Emma left Maplecroft. I don't believe she gave an interview later in life to the Boston Globe or any other newspaper, so the reasons she gave in that interview are spurious as far as I'm concerned.

If she was so disgusted by lesbian affairs, drunkenness, theatricals etc. she sure took her time in moving away from it! Emma supposedly consulted the Reverend Buck (her pastor) about the situation in 1903. It took TWO years (by which time the Rev Buck was dead) by the time Emma moved out. There could have been a dozen reasons. Emma's desire for a very quiet life, different housekeeping goals, quarrels about the flirtatious and handsome chauffeur John Tatro, (whom Lizzie re-hired after Emma fired him) personal habits (they were very different people) even a quarrel about the old murder. We don't know.

I think if Lizzie was lesbian in nature she didn't express it physically with Nance O' Neill or with anyone else. Women in those days often wrote flowery sentiments to each other in words which later generations regard as sexual. They weren't.

irina · Post by **irina** » Mon Aug 25, 2014 9:28 pm

I'm the one who is critical of small towns, Curryong, because I lived a long time in an area where education, learning and culture were rejected. Being partially illiterate was praised. The movie theater had a redneck rating meaning some films were considered too deep for the locals and when there were fewer copies of films some NEVER were shown in that area. Some small towns can be nice and some can be nasty.

I don't think we know enough about Lizzie to know about any love life or no love life or orientation. If a woman doesn't want to get married or have a relationship it's nice to have a lot of female friends. I am a widow but do not want to have a relationship nor remarry so I have female friends and I don't date. In the newspaper coverage of the time Lizzie was sometimes described as having "massive physique" but heck, she was 5'4" tall. How massive is that. Bridget was also described with the same words. I don't know if the reports got messed up or what. Bridget looks like she could have been more like that description.

Like we have mentioned before some historical women from Lizzie's day have been heavily investigated by researchers and writers of today who had hopes to prove lesbianism. Even with much more known of these womens' lives the results are very inconclusive. I believe women of Lizzie's day didn't approach marriage like we do today: "falling in love", engagement ring, bridle showers, etc. I believe they saw marriage more realistically in terms of a husband who was a good provider, hopefully not abusive or a drunk, who would be a good father. The sexual aspects were likely looked at as "an ordeal to be borne" and child birth likewise, as well as being a risk to life itself. From that perspective spinsterhood may seem like a good alternative.

I was thinking this evening that if there was something REALLY peculiar suspected in the Borden household it seems like Victoria Lincoln would have picked up that gossip. I don't recall her really suggesting anything too far out but it has been years since I read her book. Incest could likely be kept very secret but I would think if Lizzie was masculine in a noticeable way or had questionable relationships, there would have been gossip.

phineas · Post by **phineas** » Mon Aug 25, 2014 9:42 pm

It's certainly possible that Lizzie wasn't interested in men, lesbian or not. She did adore Nance O'N, but I'm with Curryong that it seems more schoolgirl crush and hero worship than sexual in nature. Of course people were gay back then, so it could have been more but we don't know. Lizzie had no other friendships that were talked about like this one, so it appears to be a one-off. Of all the whispers about her, this one didn't begin until the 70s or 80s. As Irina notes, there probably would have been gossip.

Because we don't know of any suitors doesn't mean there weren't any, but I think if Lizzie had had admirers they'd be investigated, and we would have heard about it in testimony or newspapers. The lack of any male mentioned in connection with Emma or Lizzie seems to point to there being no serious affair, ever. At least that the public knew about.

Her looks, as have been said, shouldn't have been a drawback. While not a beauty, she was certainly attractive enough to marry, especially with her father's fortune. She might have been diffident and shy with men, but someone could have drawn her out with a dedicated suit. As Curryong said, the lack of parties and balls took her out of the social life of the town where many engagements certainly started. Here I wonder if Abby was as culpable as Andrew. She would have/should have known how important these things are and either didn't want to go up against him or was past the point of trying to intercede in the girls' lives. It Andrew didn't outright forbid parties, it could have been as simple as not having the right clothes and staying home. There was no worldly wise, connected Borden relation who took an interest and might have chaperoned or interceded with Andrew. So they grew up, put their skirts down and their hair up and nobody cared. It's sad.

twinsrwe · Post by **twinsrwe** » Mon Aug 25, 2014 10:23 pm

Lizzie was an attractive woman; granted there are pictures of her which do not capture her femininity, but I think this is true of all woman. Here are two pictures of Lizzie, that I think show her femininity very well:

25labpansy.jpg

Lizzie Borden, circa 1889.jpg

Curryong · Post by **Curryong** » Mon Aug 25, 2014 11:14 pm

I was only reading Lincoln again on my Kindle last night, the part which states her belief that Lizzie had a form of epilepsy. She does state 'the inner-circle belief (Fall River elite?) was that 'poor Lizzie was 'a little crazy', rather than a monetary motive at the time of the murders.

She also cites that there was knowledge at the Union Bank (Andrew was on the board I believe) that for some time Andrew had been dissatisfied by the unprofitability of one of the Swansea farms. He had intended, Lincoln writes, to put Morse in charge there, with Morse's niece as housekeeper. He also intended, she asserts, to put this property in Abby's name.

The 'girls' had not been told directly by Andrew of the Whitehead property purchase, but had found out about it via gossip from mrs Whitehead telling neighbours in the town. All hell then broke loose at No 92. I've never heard Lincoln's assertion about Morse and the signing over of the Swansea farm stated elsewhere as a verifiable fact. If it was, however, it could be a motive for murder.

debbiediablo · Post by **debbiediablo** » Tue Aug 26, 2014 5:37 am

I'm inclined to give John Watson's point some serious consideration, probably because the male-female relationships in that house don't look right to me. However, another possible reason as to why neither of the sisters married relates to (borrowing from Bob Dylan) the times they were a changin.'

Women and the Progressive Movement
by Miriam Cohen

Jane Addams,Twenty Years at Hull-House (New York, 1910). (Gilder Lehrman Coll.)Jane Addams, from the frontispiece of her book, Twenty Years at Hull-House (New York: Macmillan, 1910). (Gilder Lehrman Collection)

At the end of the nineteenth century, American politicians, journalists, professionals, and volunteers mobilized on behalf of reforms meant to deal with a variety of social problems associated with industrialization. Woman activists, mainly from middling and prosperous social backgrounds, emphasized the special contribution that women could make in tackling these problems. With issues of public health and safety, child labor, and women’s work under dangerous conditions so prominent, who better than women to address them? Focusing on issues that appealed to women as wives and mothers, and promoting the notion that women were particularly good at addressing such concerns, the female activists practiced what women’s historians call maternalist politics. By emphasizing traditional traits, female social reformers between 1890 and World War I created new spaces for themselves in local and then national government even before they had the right to vote. They carved out new opportunities for paid labor in professions like social work and public health. Maternalists also stressed the special needs of poor women and children in order to build support for America’s early welfare state.[1]

Regardless of sex, activists did not always value the same reforms, nor did they always agree on the nature of the problems, but as part of the progressive movement, their concerns shared some basic characteristics. Historian Daniel Rodgers argues that progressives drew on three “distinct clusters of ideas.” One was the deep distrust of growing corporate monopoly, the second involved the increasing conviction that in order to progress as a society, the commitment to individualism had to be tempered with an appreciation of our social bonds. Progressives also believed that modern techniques of social planning and efficiency would offer solutions to the social problems at hand. Their ideas did not add up to a coherent ideology, but, as Rodgers notes, “they tended to focus discontent on unregulated individual power.”[2] As the nineteenth century closed, periodic economic downturns served as wake-up calls to the dangers of relying solely on the workings of the free market to ensure the general prosperity.
Hide Full Essay

Concerns about social problems were not new for women. Since the antebellum era, middle-class white and black women engaged in various forms of civic activity related to the social and moral welfare of those less fortunate. Temperance, abolition, and moral reform activities dominated women’s politics before the Civil War. By the 1870s, women were broadening their influence, working in national organizations such as the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), which helped single women in America’s cities. During the Progressive era, a moral-reform agenda motivated many women; such organizations as the WCTU, for example, intensified their activities on behalf of a national ban on alcohol and against prostitution.

But it was after 1890 that the issues surrounding social welfare took on their greatest urgency. The Panic of 1893, along with the increasing concerns about industrialization—the growing slums across American cities, the influx of new immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, the increase in labor strife—contributed to that sense of urgency.

Within a decade, vast networks of middle-class and wealthy women were energetically addressing how these social programs affected women and children. Encouraged by the national General Federation of Women’s Clubs (GFWC), local women’s clubs turned to learning about and then addressing the crises of the urbanizing society. Excluded by the GFWC, hundreds of African American women’s clubs affiliated with the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) focused on family welfare among black Americans who were dealing with both poverty and racism. The National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW), dominated by prosperous German-Jewish women, sprang into action in the 1890s as well, to work with the newly arrived eastern European Jewish community. The National Congress of Mothers (later the Parent Teacher Association) emerged in 1897 to address the needs of the American family and the mother’s crucial role in fulfilling those needs. Activist women throughout the country, from Boston in the East, to Seattle in the West, and Memphis in the South, focused on improving public schools, especially in poor neighborhoods.[3]

Responding to the problems associated with urban industrial life, American woman reformers looked to their counterparts in Europe who were struggling with similar issues. One such initiative, which caught on with American women who visited England in the 1880s, was Toynbee Hall, a settlement house located in London’s poverty-stricken East End. The efforts of the men at Toynbee to reach across the class divide inspired Jane Addams, who founded Chicago’s Hull House in 1889, as well as a group of Smith College graduates who founded the College Settlement House in New York around the same time.[4]

The settlement house movement soon took hold throughout the country. Located in urban, poor, often immigrant communities, the houses were residences for young middle-class and prosperous women, and some men, who wished not merely to minister to the poor and then go home, but to live among them, to be their neighbors, to participate with them in bettering their communities. Their poorer neighbors did not live in the settlement houses but spent time there, participating in various clubs and classes, including kindergarten and day nurseries for children. Settlement houses also sent volunteers out into the community. Truly pioneers in the area of public health, their visiting nurses taught hygiene and health care to poor immigrant households. Settlement house workers and other woman reformers also campaigned for public milk stations in an effort to reduce infant mortality.

Most settlement houses identified themselves with Protestant Christianity, and indeed, in response, Catholic and Jewish activists founded their own institutions. However, both Lillian Wald, head of the famous Henry Street Settlement in New York, and Addams, among others, ran secular institutions.

Taking up residence in settlement houses attracted women who wished to carve out non-traditional lifestyles, where they could be among their close companions and devote themselves to what they saw as meaningful lives. By the mid-1890s, the core community of Hull House consisted of Jane Addams, the most celebrated female social reformer of her day; Florence Kelley, Illinois’s first State Factory Investigator, who would later move to New York to become the head of the National Consumers League (NCL); Dr. Alice Hamilton, America’s founder of industrial medicine; and Julia Lathrop, a pioneer in the field of child welfare who was to become the first woman to head a federal agency when she became director of the newly founded US Children’s Bureau in 1912. Historian Kathryn Sklar writes of the Hull House community that the women “found what others could not provide for them, dear friendship, livelihood, contact with the real world, and a chance to change it.”[5] Only a small group of women actually took up residence at the settlement house, but many women in cities and towns throughout the country worked as volunteers for these establishments, including the young Eleanor Roosevelt, who worked at the Riverside Settlement in New York City before her marriage to Franklin.

Beyond the settlement houses, women worked hard on a variety of social initiatives. One of the most important involved efforts to improve working conditions in America’s factories, particularly in those trades, such as garments and textiles, that employed so much immigrant labor at low wages. The National Consumers League and the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC), both dominated by women, launched campaigns across the country, calling on state governments to institute protective labor laws that would end very long work hours for women and the labor of children and young adolescents. They also demanded that state government provide factory inspectors to see that the new laws were enforced.

Some progressive women believed that rather than campaigning on behalf of poor women, they could best offer help by encouraging the efforts of working women to empower themselves through collective bargaining. Unionizing women was an especially difficult challenge because the larger society viewed them as marginal workers, rather than critical breadwinners who needed to support themselves or help support their families. The National Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL), with branches in a number of cities, was an organization of wealthy and working-class women who came together to aid the efforts of women who were already working with their male co-workers in the garment and textile unions.

While many did philanthropic work on behalf of poor families, in this new era women also called for state participation in granting financial relief to the needy. To help one group of poor families—single mothers forced to raise children without male incomes—they campaigned on behalf of state aid to widowed mothers. Given the high male mortality due to work accidents and poor job conditions, the growing numbers of young, very poor widowed mothers was a major social problem. By the early twentieth century, many family welfare experts were convinced that if at all possible, poor children of widowed mothers should be kept at home, rather than placed in orphanages, which had been the custom in the nineteenth century. In the second decade of the twentieth century, mothers’ pension leagues campaigning across the country were remarkably successful. By 1920, the vast majority of states had enacted some sort of mothers’ pension program. These state-funded initiatives were the precursors to the Aid to Dependent Children Program, which became federal law during the New Deal as part of the Social Security Act.

Mothers’ pension campaigns exemplify how advocates for expanding social welfare appealed to the maternalist sensibilities of middle-class audiences. In writing in 1916 about the activities of their Propaganda Committee, Sophia Loeb of the Allegheny County Mothers’ Pension League, campaigning for mothers’ pensions in the Greater Pittsburgh area, reported on the first-ever public celebration of Mother’s Day in the United States, noting that the gathering of 1,100 “was unique in the fact that not only was tribute paid to Motherhood in speech and flower, but Mother was honored in a more practical way by trying to assist the mothers less fortunate, in their struggle to help her children under her own roof.”[6]

Reforming the juvenile justice system was another way to limit the institutionalization of poor children. Prior to the Progressive era, children arrested for a whole host of crimes, including truancy and shoplifting, could end up tried as adults and placed in adult jails. Yet, increasingly, middle-class and prosperous Americans were adopting the view that children, including poor children, should be viewed not as miniature adults, but as human beings who needed proper teaching and nurturing in order to grow into responsible adults; such nurturing would preferably be done by parents, not outside institutions. In 1899, Hull House reformers such as Julia Lathrop and Louise DeKoven Bowen persuaded Illinois lawmakers to institute the first juvenile court; unlike the adult courts, it could exercise greater flexibility in sentencing and it could concentrate on rehabilitation rather than punishment. Soon after, such courts were instituted in cities across the United States.[7]

Whether campaigning for mothers’ pensions, protective labor legislation, public health programs, or the establishment of the juvenile justice system, progressive maternalists stressed that these initiatives would help women become better mothers. They advocated specific programs because of their traditional convictions regarding gender roles and family life, with men as successful breadwinners and women proper domestic caretakers, but their approach was also strategic. Women knew that their participation in the political arena flew in the face of conventional norms; concentrating on issues already associated with women’s traditional roles lessened the impact of their challenge.

Some woman activists, however, did challenge aspects of traditional gender norms. The writer and renowned lecturer Charlotte Perkins Gilman also believed in women’s special attributes, but she questioned the very organization of society based on the private household, arguing that both housekeeping and childcare could be done better in collective settings, which would free women to pursue other occupations. Other activists, unlike the social progressives, promoted a new embrace of women’s sexuality, some advocating free love. Margaret Sanger campaigned for access to safe, inexpensive contraception in order that women could assert more control over their health and the way they chose to mother.

Because Gilman, Sanger, and the free-love advocates promoted women’s autonomy, we often associate them with the emerging feminist movement that was to become so important later in the twentieth century. But scholars have recently argued that the progressive social reformers can also be named feminists, specifically social feminists, because they were committed to increasing women’s social and political rights even as they used arguments about women’s special needs and attributes to achieve their goals. Thus, the progressive women promoted women’s suffrage; many worked vigorously on behalf of the cause and belonged to the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), the dominant pro-suffrage organization of the day. In arguing for women’s suffrage in the Ladies’ Home Journal in 1910, Jane Addams appealed to her middle-class readers by pointing out that women in modern society no longer performed the functions of producing for their families all the goods that they would consume at home; if they cared about the health and safety of their own families—the food they ate, the water they drank, the diseases they might catch—they ought to care about the conditions all around them, and they ought to want the ability to vote on these public concerns.[8] Moreover, social feminists did not always emphasize women’s special role as mothers when arguing on behalf of the vote. As pragmatic activists, they adopted more than one strategy to achieve reforms. Like men, their politics were multifaceted and were shaped by a variety of concerns. To achieve their ends, they worked with various reform coalitions and they often tailored their rhetoric to strengthen those coalitions.

And though they believed that women had a special affinity for social welfare work, progressive women did not rely on the notion that women had a natural sympathy for the poor. Tackling the social problems of the day, they believed, required hardheaded research. “A colony of efficient and intelligent women,” Florence Kelley wrote of her colleagues at Hull House in 1892.[9] Three years later, the women of Hull House published the famous detailed survey of social conditions in Chicago, Hull House Maps and Papers, now considered a major work in the early history of American social science. Women conducted detailed social investigations as part of their campaigns on behalf of protective labor legislation. And at the Children’s Bureau, Lathrop campaigned on behalf of public health initiatives for infant and maternal care and against child labor by first launching major investigations of the conditions that she wanted government to address.

A conviction that knowledge about social conditions would lead to social change, implemented through modern “scientific” methods, was a hallmark of progressive social reformers, both male and female, but for woman researchers, the determination to study social problems opened up new opportunities to forge a place in the emerging social sciences. Women often founded and developed the first graduate schools of social work. In turn, the professionalization of social work provided women with a number of professional opportunities, not only as teachers in graduate training programs. As the new fields of child and family welfare were taken up by local, state, and ultimately, the national government, social feminists argued successfully that women ought to perform these jobs. In 1919, the Children’s Bureau under Lathrop employed 150 women and only 19 men.[10] Women also took jobs in the US Women’s Bureau, founded in the aftermath of World War I to attend to the needs of working women. In 1914, Congress funded educational extension programs in rural areas, which included home economics. Working for the United States Department of Agriculture as home economists, women provided information on new household technologies and worked to spread the new home economics education out to the countryside.[11]

In rendering “professional” advice to poor mothers, advocating the use of modern housekeeping and nutritional and medical practices, and promoting the supervision of families in the juvenile court, the progressive women surely exhibited class biases. Progressive reformers were often too sure they knew what was best for the poor. But more so than most reformers of the day, women like Lathrop, Kelley, and Adams had an appreciation for the real problems faced by the poor; Lathrop, specifically, had a special respect for the hard work of mothers, especially poor mothers. Convinced that poverty and inadequate services, not character defects, were responsible for disease, malnutrition, delinquency, and premature death among poor families, Lathrop and her staff at the Children’s Bureau worked tirelessly to prove it to others.

The genuine efforts of social feminists to reach across class lines were born of their belief that shared experiences among women, and shared ideals, could erase class differences. Yet immigrant women, living with families that were often struggling just to make ends meet, often had priorities that differed from the more prosperous women seeking to help them. As a labor activist from the working class, Leonora O’Reilly worked with elite women in a variety of reform organizations, formed close friendships with wealthy women, and was a founder of the New York WTUL, yet at various times she complained about upper-class condescension.[12] The class divide existed among women within minority groups as well. Newly arrived Russian Jewish women often resented what they perceived to be condescension on the part of the women of the NCJW, even though the wealthier women did provide critical help for immigrants. Similarly, the commitment to uplift on the part of black women in the NACW meant providing essential social services to their poorer sisters, but the more prosperous women often had difficulty understanding and appreciating some of the concerns of poorer women.

If class prevented women from uniting, reaching across racial lines was even more problematic. While white women could be patronizing when it came to immigrants, their attitude toward African American mothers could be even more troubling, and steeped in assumptions about the superiority of all European cultures. Many progressive women assumed that European immigrants could learn modern values regarding good mothers, but most believed black Americans could not. Since settlement houses were largely segregated, black women could not and did not rely on white settlement houses, founding their own, such as the Frederick Douglass Center in Chicago, developed by the activists Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Fannie Williams, and white reformer Celia Parker Woolley. In 1897, Victoria Earl Matthews established New York City’s White Rose Mission, the first black settlement run exclusively by African Americans.[13] Black women, like their white counterparts, also pushed women’s suffrage, only to find that the suffrage organizations such as NAWSA were at best indifferent regarding the issue of black access to suffrage and at worst, hostile.

Most white reformers were limited by the prejudices of their day, but some of the most prominent stood out for their broader vision of equal rights. Florence Kelley and Jane Addams were strong supporters of African American suffrage; although they both had been active members of NAWSA, they publicly protested the organization’s endorsement of a states’ rights position on the question of whether or not black Americans should be given equal access to the ballot box. Kelley, Adams, and Lathrop were early and active members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

The decade that followed World War I saw the demobilization of most progressive initiatives. Efforts to enhance government responsibility for social welfare took a back seat to nativist campaigns and moves to decrease the power of trade unions while increasing the ability of American corporations to operate unimpeded by government regulations. By the middle of the 1920s most of the progressive women’s organizations and their members were facing well-publicized accusations that they were part of a vast radical conspiracy that was determined to bring a communist government to the United States, just as the Bolsheviks had recently done in Russia.

Yet the achievements of the earlier decades had long-term effects that outlasted the postwar backlash. A younger generation of women remained employed in government agencies such as the Children’s Bureau and the Women’s Bureau. In 1933, three years into America’s greatest economic depression, the issues of social welfare moved front and center on the national agenda. When Franklin Roosevelt assumed the presidency that March, progressive women who had actively supported his candidacy and worked hard to get out the vote were in a position to demand they be given even greater roles in the federal government. The appointment of Frances Perkins as Secretary of Labor, the first woman to head a federal cabinet department, was evidence of their political power. A former head of the New York Consumers League, former industrial commissioner for New York State, and former state labor commissioner for New York Governor Franklin Roosevelt, Perkins, and the progressive women around her and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, would now work successfully to implement national legislation on child labor, income supports for needy Americans, and a whole host of issues that had long been at the heart of their political agenda.

[1] See Molly Ladd-Taylor, Mother Work: Women, Child Welfare, and the State, 1890–1933 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994); Robyn Muncy, Creating a Female Dominion in American Reform, 1890–1935 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).

[2] Daniel Rodgers, “In Search of Progressivism,” Reviews in American History 10, no. 4 (December 1982), 123.

[3] Maureen A. Flanagan, America Reformed: Progressives and Progressivisms, 1890–1920s (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 46.

[4] Nancy Woloch, Women and the American Experience, 5th ed. (New York: McGraw Hill, 2011), 257.

[5] Kathryn Kish Sklar, Florence Kelley and the Nation’s Work: The Rise of Women’s Political Culture, 1830–1900 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 186.

[6] “Report of the Propaganda Committee,” Report of the Mothers’ Pension League of Allegheny County, 1915–1916 (Pittsburgh, PA), n.p.

[7] Maureen A. Flanagan, America Reformed, 45–46; Michael Willrich, City of Courts: Socializing Justice in Progressive Era Chicago (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

[8] “Why Women Should Vote,” Ladies’ Home Journal 27 (January 1910), 1–22.

[9] Sklar, Florence Kelley and the Nation’s Work, 194.

[10] Muncy, Creating a Female Dominion, 51.

[11] Woloch, Women and the American Experience, 289.

[12] Lara Vapnek, Breadwinners: Working Women and Economic Independence, 1865–1920 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 75.

[13] Cheryl D. Hicks, Talk With You Like a Woman: African American Women, Justice, and Reform in New York, 1890–1925 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 100.

Miriam Cohen is the Evalyn Clark Professor of History at Vassar and author of Workshop to Office: Two Generations of Italian Women in New York City (1993). She is the author of numerous articles on the history of American social welfare and is currently working on a biography of Julia Lathrop, forthcoming from Westview Press.

Curryong · Post by **Curryong** » Tue Aug 26, 2014 5:56 am

Very impressive, debbie! Of course, neither Emma or Lizzie seem to have leaped into the vanguard of the fight for women's rights, factory workers rights, women's suffrage, or indeed, anything that would have prevented them from waltzing up the aisle to the wedding march. Lizzie was interested in her church charities and later in assisting with scholarships for the poor etc. but she could have done that just as easily as a married lady. Emma's type, the born spinster, was much more common in the 19th century than it is today, while Lizzie, well, there are many views on Lizzie..!

(Australian women got the right to vote in 1902 and didn't have to fight for it, by the way!)

debbiediablo · Post by **debbiediablo** » Tue Aug 26, 2014 6:21 am

Not leaping into the vanguard doesn't mean their thinking wasn't impacted. Some of these very groups came to Lizzie's defense, and even though there doesn't appear to be a conflict of interest between marriage and the progressive movement, often times there was. People rarely give up power and control willingly, and the patriarchal establishment in turn-of-century America was no different. I'm guessing, but to me Lizzie's relationship with Nance O'Neill had more to do with Nance's willingness to flagrantly act in opposition to the way well-bred women were supposed to behave as opposed to any type of sexual relationship between the two women.

Curryong · Post by **Curryong** » Tue Aug 26, 2014 7:06 am

Yes, you're correct. We are all impacted in our own way by the struggles and social issues of the times in which we grow up, and how those before us have carried the load to that point. The thing that impacted my generation was of course the Vietnam War, which I and my friends at college were against. Britain didnt take part in that conflict but when I came to Australia its young men were being conscripted and there were huge demonstrations and marches in which I took part.

For Lizzie the temperance movement, so immensely strong at that time especially in the United States, must have been an important influence. It's said that Andrew's background was one which discouraged alcohol, and certainly many temperance leaders rallied around Lizzie when she was at trial. Many feminists of the day preached against the demon drink. With that kind of sober upbringing, (in all senses,) you can imagine Lizzie being fascinated by the sophisticated and novel creature that was Nance O' Neill. I still don't think it was lesbianism but what Phineas calls 'a schoolgirl crush.'! I wonder whether Lizzie was ever tempted to break the pledge and have a glass of champagne while partying with Nance and her friends?

Angel · Post by **Angel** » Tue Aug 26, 2014 9:27 am

I've always wished that there was more information on David Anthony. His name seems to be the only one that pops up with Lizzie's story.

debbiediablo · Post by **debbiediablo** » Tue Aug 26, 2014 9:50 am

Me, too, regarding David Anthony!!! Maybe someone on ancestry.com has some family lore that would like to share. I can check.

Not only was Lizzie tempted by the champagne, I think she freely imbibed! Perhaps not to staggering drunkenness but enough to enjoy the buzz. Which was likely an affront to prudish Emma. My great grandmother swore that not a drop of alcohol ever touched her lips. This woman gave birth to twelve children starting at age 16 and reared eleven of them to adulthood. Then one daughter died leaving six grandchildren, and then a daughter-in-law died leaving six more. Great-grandmother stepped in and reared that dozen as well...24 children, 23 reaching adulthood. She swore to be a teetotaler but started in the early 50s to drink Geritol, "twice the iron than a pound of calf's liver" in liquid containing 12% alcohol! She died at age 91, also claiming that the women of the late 50s were dressing 'wantonly'...that Great-Grandfather, despite over 40 years of marriage, had never seen her knees!!

Here's an interesting background on Rev. Buck who would've had an impact on both sisters.

Buck.pdf

It's also interesting to Google "asexual" because that's the (as of yet unrecognized) fourth option beyond heterosexual, homosexual and bisexual (I'm purposely leaving out metrosexual because that's a lifestyle choice not a sexual orientation.) I have always believed there exists a small percentage of people who are not sexually attracted to anyone...male or female.

Curryong · Post by **Curryong** » Tue Aug 26, 2014 10:27 am

Well, at least the iron tonic did your great-grandmother some good, as she lived to be over ninety. I suppose when skirts went short in the mid 1920's a lot of people would have considered it wanton and immoral.

I have wondered whether Lizzie was perhaps asexual, but of course we know very little about her inner life. She may have been quite repressed in some respects and longing to burst out in others. To me Emma appears as if she might have been asexual, or a suppressor of her natural instincts at least.

debbiediablo · Post by **debbiediablo** » Tue Aug 26, 2014 8:17 pm

Then sitting here I suddenly think that Emma reared the family she was responsible for: Lizzie!

twinsrwe · Post by **twinsrwe** » Tue Aug 26, 2014 8:35 pm

Angel wrote:I've always wished that there was more information on David Anthony. His name seems to be the only one that pops up with Lizzie's story.

Angel, have you checked out the topic titled, Exploring the David Anthony/Ruby Cameron theory? It’s a very interesting thread.

Here is the link: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=5321

debbiediablo · Post by **debbiediablo** » Tue Aug 26, 2014 11:27 pm

twinsrwe wrote:
Angel wrote:I've always wished that there was more information on David Anthony. His name seems to be the only one that pops up with Lizzie's story.
Angel, have you checked out the topic titled, Exploring the David Anthony/Ruby Cameron theory? It’s a very interesting thread.

Here is the link: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=5321

WHOA!!! This is interesting...from ancestry.com...David Jr. and Lizzie had something very important in common:

David M. Anthony Sr.

Birth: Sep. 24, 1835
Death: Nov. 8, 1915

s/o John Anthony and Maria B Davis

Family links:
Parents:
John Anthony (1807 - 1876)
Maria B Davis Anthony (1805 - 1883)

Spouses:
Ruth A Horton Anthony (1820 - 1879)
Abbie Carll Anthony (1849 - 1908)

Children:
Ella M Anthony Horton (1867 - 1920)*
David M Anthony (1869 - 1924)*
Harold H Anthony (1881 - 1935)*

Siblings:
John N Anthony (1831 - 1861)*
Edward F Anthony (1833 - 1898)*
David M Anthony (1835 - 1915)
George M Anthony (1837 - 1912)*
Charles Wesley Anthony (1838 - 1898)*

*Calculated relationship

debbiediablo · Post by **debbiediablo** » Tue Aug 26, 2014 11:35 pm

Do you all remember that cup with the engraving of Abby spelled Abbie...

Like Lizzie, David Jr. never married. He predeceased her in 1924.

Curryong · Post by **Curryong** » Wed Aug 27, 2014 12:42 am

So that's how it got to Maplecroft!!

debbiediablo · Post by **debbiediablo** » Wed Aug 27, 2014 12:50 am

It makes more sense than Abby giving Lizzie an engraved gift with a misspelling...

Also interesting that the giver would be David's step-mother.

Angel · Post by **Angel** » Wed Aug 27, 2014 1:41 pm

I read the link. One thing... maybe the reference to the "meat wagon" was just a fuzzy memory of an old woman. Could it have been, instead, the buggy that was waiting outside the Borden house? That buggy has never been explained.

irina · Post by **irina** » Wed Aug 27, 2014 10:06 pm

Lots of fascinating things here. I reread the David Anthony story and it just doesn't hold together for me. For one thing Norah/Bridget, if they are one and the same, supposedly leave town and stay in the country for awhile. Many other sources seem to track Bridget's living arrangements all the time after the murders. A "meat wagon" supposedly helped David escape. While I believe a person could have gotten in and out of the yard and not been seen I would think a meat wagon would have been noticed. How normal would it have been for there to be a meat wagon in the neighborhood? As I understand it family was summoned via Norah/Bridget and attorneys and thus the meat wagon came. This would bring in the short time frame again. Very shortly after Andrew was killed Bridget was running all over looking for Dr. Bowen, etc. A mention is made of David being "crazy" yet there doesn't seem to be anything to back that up either. When a few things don't add up I tend to disregard the whole story.

I brought up once before some questions put to Emma at the inquest. I have no idea the significance of the questioning. The gist has to do with who did the marketing and where was it done.

Q: Didn't have any particular place?
A: We always had the groceries from Mr. Wade's and John M. Deane's. My sister used to order a great many things from John M. Deane's.
Q: Was that a meat market?
A: No Sir.
Q: Where was the meat usually purchased?
A: I don't know.
Q: Who usually purchased the meat?
A: Father or Mrs. Borden.

Maybe the point is to establish whether or not Abby would have actually gone marketing for "meat" or whether Andrew did the marketing. If the answer had been, "Father always bought the meat", that would have messed up Lizzie's testimony. I still find this odd. The next questions are about axes in the cellar. I doubt this has anything to do with a "meat wagon" or anyone in the meat business. This line of questioning was not repeated in the trial nor does anything like this show up in the witness statements.

Maybe it's possible Lizzie had a friendship with David and someone made it into something nasty. His relatives said he was musically gifted and I could see that being appealing to Lizzie with or without romance.

Curryong · Post by **Curryong** » Wed Aug 27, 2014 10:46 pm

Perhaps they were trying to establish some reason why the household had been sick and why Abby so frightened on that Wednesday. Andrew had two farms. You'd think that if a sheep or two had to be killed Andrew and his family would grab a side of lamb or mutton. They may have wondered whether Andrew or the home-handyman did some home slaughtering. Of course the family sometimes fancied other meats and I suppose Abby purchased those.

There was nine years age difference between Lizzie and Dave Anthony, who seems to have been a quiet and sensitive soul. For such a very young man to pay Lizzie attention at dances, Church functions etc would have caused a lot of gossip, and there was none. He was never seen near her. You're correct Irina. Nothing adds up in the Dave Anthony theory.

debbiediablo · Post by **debbiediablo** » Thu Aug 28, 2014 12:46 am

I'm rereading Kat's post about Grandma whom she pretty much identifies. G's parents can be traced through ancestry.com. I can still consider David Anthony but the getaway seems almost too convoluted to believe. Even if true, the story passed from a dying woman who had undoubtedly restructured the murders in her own mind for 35 years to another woman who waited 48 years to retell the story and then to Grandma who is likely in her 70s now (her parents would be 92 and 91 if I've got her ID correct.) So even the truth could get seriously mixed up.

What's trivia-esquely interesting is David also had a step-mother named Abbie, spelled like the engraving that has confused everyone as to why Abby would give Lizzie something with a misspelling. Andrew Jennings son-in-law was related by marriage to David Anthony's niece who denied the story. The Trickey-McHenry story was speculation and falsehood but it does make me wonder. The author met with a fatal accident not too long afterward; it would certainly explain the jailhouse conversation between Lizzie and Emma; David could have come into the house with or without hatchet when Lizzie returned from Alice's; the hatchet and the bloodstains went with him; his rage was directed at the abortion of his child as much or more than at not being able to marry Lizzie; this would explain Bowen's evasiveness; maybe the stains on the blue cord were bloodstains, just not Andrew's; Bridget would sympathize with Lizzie and protect her and for sure would fear the Anthony's; and the Anthony name and money could buy or sell anybody or anything in Fall River at the time. David died in 1924, three years before Lizzie finally told this story...if, indeed, she did. The non-conformity of the story to the facts doesn't bother me so much given it's passed through the mouths of three elderly people over a period of 115 or so years. What bothers me is Nora v. Bridget and where was the meat wagon...or any wagon? The getaway needs a lot of looking at and tweaking. Then again, the Anthony money could buy a lot of silence.

irina · Post by **irina** » Thu Aug 28, 2014 9:42 am

I have a strong feeling the reason this case can't be figured out is because of some level of cover up but who is covering up for who is unknown. It seems to be the rule with serious historians that if even one major mistake appears in a story the story should be disregarded. I think this is a safe way to approach my own writing. The BIG problem for me is Norah going to stay on a farm till things died down. If Norah is Bridget that appears to be rank invention and that is a BIG invention.

If David was shy and musical I could see him and Lizzie having a quiet friendship that did not include overt social life. I could see it leading to romance. There isn't any indication that Lizzie had any relationship with any male person. It's possible she had a secret friendship based around a common interest like music. On the other hand FR was such a gossipy place it would be hard for something like this to happen without everyone knowing. It was a town scandal when Dr. Bowen took Lizzie to church! I never figured out that one. How much more innocent could something be than going to church?

On and off the subject I just picked up a new book on Charles Manson. If I was asked to describe his birth mother a week ago I would have said "white trash". Charlie himself said he was the off spring of a teenage prostitute. Her wild ways and prison time have always been emphasized. This new author ("Manson" by McGuinn) delved into a lot of information and presented a well rounded picture of a woman who messed up but worked hard to make a good life as she went along. My Borden point is we seem to have no way to get a well rounded picture of Lizzie or anyone in her family. That would make such a difference in solving the riddle.

Curryong · Post by **Curryong** » Thu Aug 28, 2014 10:48 am

I think the Bordens were such a self-contained family, whom nobody much visited, except for John Morse and Abby's half-sisters occasionally. No-one talked afterwards, as many relatives/friends/ work colleagues would nowadays, in this era of cheque book journalism.

You know, of course, that I bought Sherry/Augusta's well-researched book 'Resurrections' a little while ago. This is her take on the David Anthony saga.

Quote 'Resurrections' Page 179.

* Ruby said David died in 1917, during the Influenza Pandemic, and was buried in her family plot in an unmarked grave.
(He died in 1924 and is buried in his own family plot. His grave is marked.)

* Bridget Sullivan doesn't exist. She might be the Nora Donahue in Ruby's tale.

* Ruby has Lizzie's biological mother leaving Lizzie a great deal of money (including some textile mills that the Borden parents had control of even in Lizzie's thirties). They were against Lizzie marrying David because this would mean losing control of wealth.
(As far as is known Sarah didn't leave any money or property.)

* Ruby doesn't mention David's family. In her version the Camerons help him after the murder, and scurry him out of town. Nothing is said about informing the Anthonys of their son's whereabouts.

Page 180
* David left the ageing Bordens to go outside to get an axe (he knew exactly where it was.) The Bordens waited for him inside and as he butchered one the other stood and waited his/her turn. It all happened in a flurry, which does nothing to explain the hour and a half lead between Abby's death and Andrew.

* Ruby was not Lizzie's last nurse. That was Doris Humphrey, to whom Lizzie left $10,000.

* According to Ruby John Armour bought Mr Cameron's meat recipes in 1905. Mr Cameron and David set up a meat factory at their home, complete with a meat grinder engine that Cameron made himself and which Ruby sold for $50,000 during the Depression. The small factory included a cooler that Cameron made in the cellar.

*. It was in this cooler that the Cameron family hid a German man for four years during World War One.

Page 180

Ruby's personal story is just as colourful. According to Ruby she worked at the Massachusetts General Hospital; got her bachelor of science degree as an RN in three months from Columbia University; got a Masters in English Lit from Florida and a doctorate in biochemistry from Chapel Hill. She nursed FDR and told Eleanor to "just get out and enjoy yourself!"
She put a Hebrew Clinic in Boston "on its feet" and then a doctor wanted her to meet Golda Meir. They wanted her to establish a clinic in Jerusalem. She declined, she said, because she was 68 at the time.

Ruby told her story, made national headlines and died in November 1985.

debbiediablo · Post by **debbiediablo** » Thu Aug 28, 2014 10:59 am

Oh. My. Thank you Curryong and Augusta. That pretty much takes care of Ruby's credibility for me!

debbiediablo · Post by **debbiediablo** » Thu Aug 28, 2014 11:08 am

But it would make a great book!!

Curryong · Post by **Curryong** » Thu Aug 28, 2014 9:34 pm

Ruby might have had a touch of dementia or a mental illness of some degree. When she was very young maybe she was given a ride on his motorbike by David Anthony, who seems to have been a kindly man with plenty of spare time. From that one incident Ruby may have, much later in life, have constructed a whole scenario.

twinsrwe · Post by **twinsrwe** » Thu Aug 28, 2014 9:50 pm

I also purchased Sherry Chapman’s book, ‘Lizzie Borden: Resurrections’. In addition to the information Curryong posted, Sherry also had this tidbit on David Anthony Jr.:

Page 180-181:

David Anthony Jr., was born at 368 North Main Street in Fall River in the year 1869. His father was one of the founders of Swift and Company. Anthony invited Swift to join him. Anthony owned a large wholesale meat and slaughterhouse company. Anthony, Swift and Company started business in 1885, in Fall River.

For a time, David Anthony Jr. worked as a clerk at the meat company. He was somewhat younger than Lizzie Borden (23 in 1892, when Lizzie was 32). As he got older, he seemed to spend his time leisurely.

David loved the outdoors. He had enjoyed sailing most of his life, regardless of the weather. His last address was at 28 Charlotte Street in Fall River. He also had a cottage on the water in Swansea. He enjoyed music and played the viola for friends and was said to be very good on the harmonica. He belonged to the Methodist Episcopal Church in Fall River, then later became a Christian Scientist.

Davis died following an accident. The afternoon it happened, November 25, 1924, he was out sailing. Later that day he was riding his motorcycle in South Somerset and was involved in an accident that left him with a fractured skull. He died at Truesdale Hospital on December 4, 1924.

David Anthony Jr. is buried in the family plot of his own family in Oak Grove Cemetery in Fall River, Massachusetts. He is in plot 1825, Tritoma Path.

(I apologize for the sentences not being indented, as Sherry has in her book, but the reply a post won't let me do this.

Therefore I put a line space in between each paragraph.)

twinsrwe · Post by **twinsrwe** » Thu Aug 28, 2014 10:01 pm

Here are some pictures of David Anthony Jr.'s house in Swansea:

David M Anthony House, Swansea, MA.jpg

David_M_Anthony_House.jpg

David M. Anthony House 98 Bay Point Ave. Swansea, MA.jpg

twinsrwe · Post by **twinsrwe** » Thu Aug 28, 2014 10:12 pm

Curryong wrote:Ruby might have had a touch of dementia or a mental illness of some degree. When she was very young maybe she was given a ride on his motorbike by David Anthony, who seems to have been a kindly man with plenty of spare time. From that one incident Ruby might have, much later in life, have constructed a whole scenario.

In The Evening News, Sunday January 6, 1985, article it is stated: “I decided to shut my mouth forever, because it was clear to me that my own mother and father knew that David had killed the Bordens.” She said. “And Lizzie, of course. knew it too.”

http://tinyurl.com/kmw8oyv

I have always wondered why Ruby, who had decided to keep her mouth shut forever, all of a sudden at the age of 84, decides she should tell this story to a newspaper!!! You may be right, Curryong, although like so many aspects of the Borden Case, it is a mystery.

Curryong · Post by **Curryong** » Thu Aug 28, 2014 10:13 pm

Lovely photos of Davd's house and surrounding scenery, twins, thanks for those! He seems to have loved sailing and music. It's a good job for David that he was a wealthy man's son, however, as apart from working as a clerk in the family business for a short while, he doesn't seem to have had a career. Perhaps he was a director of the company after his father died. His brother seems to have carried on the family firm while David just did what he enjoyed!

twinsrwe · Post by **twinsrwe** » Thu Aug 28, 2014 10:24 pm

Angel wrote:I read the link. One thing... maybe the reference to the "meat wagon" was just a fuzzy memory of an old woman. Could it have been, instead, the buggy that was waiting outside the Borden house? That buggy has never been explained.

I believe you're right, Angel, the buggy that was waiting outside the Borden house has never been explained. Personally, I think Ruby Cameron had quite a few 'fuzzy memory' moments!!!

On Mar-4th-04, in the Ruby 2 thread, doug65oh posted: … Getting back to conclude with Ruby, I’d feel a good deal better about the whole thing if not for one quotation (in one of the Providence Journal stories I think) straight from the nurse’s mouth: “Time tends to blur things a bit, honey.” …

twinsrwe · Post by **twinsrwe** » Thu Aug 28, 2014 10:31 pm

Curryong wrote:Lovely photos of Davd's house and surrounding scenery, twins, thanks for those! He seems to have loved sailing and music. It's a good job for David that he was a wealthy man's son, however, as apart from working as a clerk in the family business for a short while, he doesn't seem to have had a career. Perhaps he was a director of the company after his father died. His brother seems to have carried on the family firm while David just did what he enjoyed!

You're welcome for the photos. Sherry did an awesome job of obtaining unknown facts on David; so far I love her book! David really does seems to have been more interested in enjoying the good things in life, rather than building a career for himself.

snokkums · Post by **snokkums** » Fri Aug 29, 2014 4:09 am

I think that while Andrew was alive, he might have had something to say about who the girls would marry. After all, when he died, the fortune would go to the girls and their husbands. I'll bet he was real fussy bout who the money was going to. And after the trial, who want to be married to an accused axe murderer?

Curryong · Post by **Curryong** » Fri Aug 29, 2014 6:38 pm

Yes, Snokkums, I'm sure you're right. Andrew would have kept a close eye on anyone who wanted to marry his girls. Unfortunately, no-one seemed to want to!

debbiediablo · Post by **debbiediablo** » Fri Aug 29, 2014 7:10 pm

One of my favorite all-time quotes is Delmore Schwatz, "Even paranoids have real enemies." For sure, Ruby is an Olympic class confabulator and has pretty much lost her credibility with me, but not every word she ever spoke was an untruth. Some of it had to be truth uber-embellished. I'd like to know if there was even a friendship between Lizzie and David.