Fun facts and random tidbits

[camgarsky4]

Every once in a while, I come across pretty 'cool' factoids which relate to the case to varying degrees. I'm creating this thread to share some of these findings and will update with new ones periodically.

Fun Fact #1
Andrew Borden was 5' 11" compared to the average male height in 1892 of 5' 7". While he was tall by general standards, he was the 'shrimp' in his own family. His sister, Lurana, was reportedly six foot tall! !
Might be a case of over stereotyping, but I would think that would make Hiram Harrington over six foot.

Fun Fact #2
Doctor Chagnon, the Borden's neighbor on the back side and owner of the famous pear orchard, sired 20 children! 13 with his first wife, zero with his second and 7 with his third and final wife. His second wife, with whom he was childless, was Marianne, who testified at the Borden trial.

Fun Fact #3
Daniel Emery, husband of Lydia Emery, was a renowned conchologist (seashell collector), living out his final decades in the Tampa area on the gulf coast. His home still stands (I've driven by it as part of my Borden obsession). He died in 1950.
As a reminder, it was to his home that John Morse visited while the Borden's were being murdered.

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[Lorcan]

That was interesting. I'm glad he enjoyed an engaging hobby in retirement.

The only thing I can think of to add to the thread is Bridget Sullivan was from Allihies, Billeragh townland, County Cork, Ireland which was known for copper mines. Butte, Montana is also known for copper mines, so it makes sense some of her relatives likely were amongst the large Irish population of Butte and Anaconda.

There is also the June 1892 Harper's magazine article mentioning Butte and Anaconda and how much more domestic servants were paid there compared to back East. I wonder if it was a combination of the two incentives that sent her far away from a life she almost certainly wanted to put far behind her.

[Inspector]

When I hear about those close to the case who lived long after the crimes, I often wonder why we have so little about their introspection.
I think that generation kept quiet about personal feelings, which is to be admired, yet we’d like to know more from many of them.

[camgarsky4]

Agree inspector.

The Emery's moved to southern California in the early 1900's, where Lydia died. It seems that Daniel relocated to Florida in the 1920's about the time that Pearson's book came out which reignited interest in the case. But the average journalist or person probably were barely aware of Lydia's role, much less her husbands. Even his obituary barely touches on his New England life. It does state he was a supervisor at a textile mill.

I've tried to figure out if any descendants are still in the Tampa area, but no luck so far. I don't live far from there and was going to contact them if there were any.

Lydia would have told Daniel in detail what happened that day. So, he would have known if Lydia had any doubts about her uncle. Ah well.

[Inspector]

That’s very interesting!
It might be an interesting project for a Borden enthusiast to compile a database with all those connected to the case, and those familiar with the Bordens during the time period of the case, to list their feelings or suspicions.
For example the dress maker, Lizzie or Emma’s friend, the Morse family, etc…

I know we discuss them separately on occasion, but to have them all listed together for a quick view, and possibly observe a percentage of how those closest to the time period felt.

[camgarsky4]

I think that is the type of analysis Lorcan was working to have his database provide. But he would be limited to official court documents I believe.

[Lorcan]

Yes, so far I only have rows for the sworn testimony and I'm pasting in and formatting the witness statements one at a time since the file is so messy. I'm having to guess it was mostly Harrington asking the questions, but I can clean it up later. I didn't include the opening and closing statements and the internal court arguments in the database, but I can suppliment that and newspaper articles and other less reliable data sources later, but I wanted to start with the sworn testimony.

What will be nice is if there was an AI-driven chatbot, I can build a user interface where if you click on a sentence in its answer the right panel would show the links to the testimony or witness statements it is basing its answer on. I already got this working, but the AI is too expensive for me to publish it - it's just an experiment for now with my normal monthly account. Soon, very soon, local AI will be so good within Windows and Mac that all of this would run locally for "free" as in the cost of your own computer and electricity, no account needed.

[CagneyBT]

LIZZIE BORDEN'S MAGIC FAN

KateMcGuirk.jpg

Mechanicville Mercury, April 27, 1895
Mrs. McQuirk. a reporter for the Now York World, has loaned to Catherine Nolan the fan that Lizzie Borden held and used during her successful trial for murder.

The Chatham Republican, May 1, 1895
Catherine Nolan, the Waterford young woman who was tried at Ballston Spa,last week, on a charge of causing the death of her brother by administering arsenic, was acquitted by the jury after ten minutes' deliberation.

During the trial, Catharine carried with her a fan, although the weather hardly called for it. The secret was that it was the identical fan carried by Lizzie Borden during her famous trial for murdering her parents.

Kate Swan McGuirk was the wife of Arthur J. McGuirk, city editor of the Fall River News, who she married in 1885. She was a reporter for the Associated Press, New York World, the New York Recorder, and the Washington Post. In 1897, she was described as "one of the best known and brainiest newspaper women in America."

She interviewed Lizzie at the Taunton jail in Sept. 1892. Among Kate's other memorable interviews were with President Grover Cleveland and Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Kate had known Lizzie when both were engaged in the work of the Fruit and Flower Mission in Fall River. Lizzie requested that Kate conduct the interview.

Kate covered Lizzie's trial and was present the day Lizzie was acquitted. Perhaps that's when Kate acquired the fan.

Summary of the Nolan case with references to Kate:
https://www.newyorkalmanack.com/2022/07 ... ning-case/

[Inspector]

That’s a fascinating case BT!
What a tragic story of heart breaking deaths in the Nolan family, and the connection to the Borden case is stranger than fiction.

The officials must have felt very strongly about the guilt of the Nolan sisters, but just couldn’t prove it.

[Lorcan]

My step-sister and her husband owned a restaurant in Ballston Spa. I'll have to ask if they know about the Nolan case.

[camgarsky4]

Cagney -- have you dug into how life unfolded for these two ladies? I hope they did something with their life...hard to believe that many deaths in the same family in such a short time was just coincidence.

[CagneyBT]

Kate McGuirk's reporting on the case:

The New York World, April 26, 1895 (By Telegraph from a Woman of The World's
Staff):

BALLSTON, N. Y., April 25. -Only thirty minutes were occupied by the prosecution to-day in their efforts to establish a motive for the poisoning of
John Nolan by his sister Catherine.

The evidence was not by any means conclusive. The day had been most trying to Miss Nolan's sympathizers. The defense, before they went into the
question of a motive, had only proved that John Nolan was dead and that five and eighteen one-hundredths grains of arsenic had been found in the portions of his organs that had been analyzed. Beyond that nothing has been positively proved. Still, the attempt to connect Catherine Nolan with the crime had resulted in the admission of Insinuating evidence that just fails short of the mark, and may leave a prejudice on the minds of the jury.

The jury looks entirely good-natured. When they take their walks they appear very jolly and not at all like a jury that was convinced it must bring in a verdict of murder in the first degree. In court they appear to be at peace with all the world.

Catherine Nolan has looked really ill all day to-day. A report reached her, however, that the prosecution was relying on her having one of her customary epileptic attacks in the court-room, and that physicians were kept in attendance on the trial to prove she was shamming in the attacks. The looked-for attack has not appeared and will not, in spite of the fact that she has received no stimulants or medicines calculated to quiet her nerves in any way.

Charles Winnie, who had "kept company," as he expressed it, with Catherine Nolan, was the first occupant of the witness chair this morning. Winnle was the young man whom Catherine had expected to marry until two weeks before her father's death, in October, 1892. Then she heard Winnle had married another girl and after the death of her parents, the dying aunt, Mrs. Gavin, as guardian of Catherine, began a breach-of-promise suit against Winnie on Catherine's behalf. That suit is still pending

Judge L'Amoreux attempted to introduce this suit into the present trial in an effort to blacken the character of the defendant. Judge Landon, for almost the only time during the trial, ruled in favor of the defendant, and еxcluded all testimony concerning Catherine Nolan's romance.

Winnie testified that he and Catherine walked to Lansingburg occasionally, and visited a drug store, where the sweethearts indulged in harmless soda water.

This was in Spaulding's drug store, where Bert Shaw worked. Shaw is the drug clerk by whom the prosecution attempted to prove that Catherine Nolan had tried to buy five cents' worth of arsenic from him at another drug store.

At first Winnle said he had never been in Spaulding's with any one of the Nolan girls but Catherine. Catherine slipped into a chair by the side of her
counsel and suggested questions to him. Prompted by her, Mr. Keach got Winnie to recall with a smile that at a Labor Day picnic, he and Mary Nolan, with Catherine and others, went to SpauldIng's. Mary and he went in to buy a seidlitz powder, and Catherine remained outside. He even decided he might have been there at other times with some of her sisters.

Then Bert Shaw, recalled to the witness stand, testified that the girl he referred to came into Noyes's drug store and asked for five cents worth of arsenic, and when questioned said she wanted to kill a dog. People were accustomed to give rats or cats, as their Intended victims, not dogs. And so he didn't want to sell her arsenic. He put up five cents of sugar of milk labeled it "he supposed" "arsenic" and gave it to her.

"So even if Catherine Nolan had wanted arsenic, there is no proof that she ever had it," said Mr. Keach.

On the сrони-ехamination of this witness Mr. Keach said he proposed to prove that at this very store persons had bought poison, killed themselves with it, and the poison had been put on the books as having been sold to another person. Judge Landon wouldn't permit that.

Asked again if the defendant was the same person to whom he gave sugar of milk, Shaw was unable to complete an identification. The prosecution has failed in any case to connect Catherine Nolan with any purchase of arsenic.

Mary Nolan was placed on the stand again, and was so very nervous at first that she seemed to be injuring her sister, while her evident determination was to say nothing that could possibly hurt her. She wore a heavy mourning face veil, which she absolutely refused to raise from her face, and her answers were given only after hesitation and with reluctance.

At the beginning of her testimony she created a disagreeable impression by swearing that Catherine was not called Sarah. Sometimes she was called Sallie, the witness said, but never Sarah. This was in direct opposition to the testimony given by all the other witnesseв. Judge L'Amoreaux at once produced for identification a signature "Sarah Nolan," which they hold is Catherine's. Mary admitted she thought it was Catherine's.

Mary described the dinner at which the supposed dose of arsenic was administered. Catherine prepared the dinner, she thought. There was bread and butter, fried fish and tea.

Catherine did not eat with them, she could not say where Catherine was at the time, and did not see her in the yard. John, Elizabeth (the fifteen-year-old girl jointly Indicted with Catherine) and Mary, the witness, ate together. They ate of everything, but Mary couldn't and wouldn't remember whether John took sugar or not, and she didn't know whether Elizabeth did or not. It wasn't the latter's custom to use sugar when milk was on the table, and they had milk at that dinner.

It has been the idea of the prosecution that John used sugar already placed in his cup by Catherine, who mixed arsenic with it and placed it beside John's plate, But Mary did remember and testified that the sugar-bowl was placed at her end of the table and the cups for the family with it.

Dinner finished, John, Mary said, went out whistling to his work, and Catherine came Into the room, sat down in John's place and started to eat from the same plate her brother had used. Then Mary went Into another room and did not see Catherine eat her dinner, so she could not say that Catherine did not herself use the supposed poisoned cup.

She then described John's sickness and told who cared for him.

He came home about 6 o'clock Friday night, gave Catherine a $10 bill, and said that he had drunk water in the mill that made him sick. Catherine told him he had better go to bed if he was sick, but John went out, and the witness saw him next after midnight when she let him into the house, and he was intoxicated. John Nolan's whereabouts during that night were proved later.

On the following morning John was feeling the effects of his revelry of the night before. He stayed at home. The girls sent for 10 cents worth of liquor. John drank that with four eggs mixed with it. Then he added five bananas, drank a bottle of soda water, ate an orange or two, and topped off with a quantity of fresh cocoanut in the shell. Every time this list of eatables and drinkables has been called off, the jury looks as if it didn't
wonder that Nolan died. A seidlitz powder was sent after the mixed menu, and by midnight Dr. Edward Seeh was in the house attending him.

Following the attempt to prove the poison was placed in the cup prepared for John at the Friday dinner, the prosecution attempted to insinuate that Catherine might have added arsenic to the beef tea prepared on Wednesday, the day John died. This was the beef tea of which Mrs. Gavin, the aunt, swore John only received a tablespoonful and she also drank a portion.

There was a long contest over the admission of any evidence intended to connect Catherine with the administration of arsenic at any time after Friday, June 8, 1894. This is the date specified in the indictment as that on which the deed was done, and Mr. Keach insisted the defendant should not be called on to refute testimony not relating to the date set by the indictment. This was an important point. The Judge has systematically ruled against the defendant since the case opened, which was supposed to be partly due to the Court being aggravated by certain methods of the counsel. He made no exception this time, and permitted the prosecution to go on.

Catherine made the beef tea, but Mary saw her aunt start upstairs with it.

Mary testified to John's always jokingly referring to Catherine as his "best girl," and to many things, all tending to prove the affectionate relations between John and Catherine. In the hands of her sister's counsel, Mary Improved matters, and testified much more ably, and, after all, did no damage to her sister's case.

Mary aiso proved that an attack of grip late in the winter, previous to his death, had left John subject to fits of despondency, and he had several vomiting spells similar to those that аccompanied his last ilineвз.

The experts again appeared. Dr. Lewis Balch described the symptoms of death from arsenical poisoning. A fatal dose of arsenic was from a grain and a half upward. The time in which arsenic would take effect will prove of value to the defendant. Dr. Balch testified that, taken in solution in tea, arsenic ought to begin to be absorbed sooner than in a solid form, and would show its effect in from an hour to two hours, or, at the longest, three hours after it had been taken. Other experts were called, and suffered extensive examinations, while the jury looked bored.

A neighbor, who said she knew the Nolans,"but didn't mix with them," testified to running in at least three times before 10 in the morning and seeing Catherine and her aunt in whispered consultations. The neighbor who 'didn't mix" also arrived in time to stand at the foot of the death-bed, which she described in an endeavor to prove that Nolan's death was accompanied by gripping arsenical pain.

Then the prosecution made its attempt to prove motive. They claimed it was to get Insurance money from policies made out in favor of Catherine. An army of insurance agents had been expected. Instead, John Roberts, special agent of the Metropolitan Insurance Company, came from New York to tell how two small policies, amounting to $96, were issued on Nolan's life. He could not say that it was Catherine's handwriting on the application.

The Metropolitan's superintendent of the Cohoes district was equally unacquainted with the signatures. John Wood, agent of the John Hancock Life Insurance Company, testified to having had an interview with Catherine W. Nolan in regard to two policies on John's life for $200 and $204 respectively, both made in favor of his father and not Catherine. The company declined to recognize her right to the face of the
policies nevertheless, without any witness but her sister, they took back their policies and paid Catherine the amount of the premiums less 20 per cent and considered that that ended it.

That was all of the attempt to prove a motive offered. and District Attorney Person astonished the crowd in the stuffy court-room by saying, "The people rest"

Mr. Keach at once asked Judge Landon to discharge the defendant, claimIng that neither the corpus delleti nor the guilt of Catherine Nolan had in any way been proved. The Judge at once declared his belief that the case ought to go to the jury and his intention to let It do so.

When court opens to-morrow W. Wiswall will open the case for the defense. The defense will cut its testimony very short.

Following the acquittal:

Mechanicville Saturday Mercury, May 4, 1895
The death of John is a fact. That arsenic was found in his stomach is another fact. Did he die from arsenical poison? How did the poison get there?
These questions are not answered. But from facts adduced it seems possible
that the solution may be as follows:

John loved whisky, and drank it when he could get it. The bedbug poison was kept in a whisky bottle found empty in his room after his death, Bedbug poisongenerally contains arsenic. This bottle was carried away, and no further evidence has been given as to whether arвenic was in it or not, though it was taken away for analysis. It is therefore fair to presume the bottle had arsenic in it. So that John. getting better and desiring Tuesday to go out. secured what he supposed was whisky and drank the bedbug poison. The result was his sickness during Tuesday night and his death Wednеsday morning, June 13….

Miss Catherine Nolan is at present at the home of her counselor. Calvin E. Keach, on Second avenue. Lansingburgh, where she will remain until she fully recovers her health. She says she will get work soon and make a home for her twо younger sisters, Mary, aged eighteen years, and Elizabeth, aged seventeenyears, and they will endeavor to keep the family together.She thinks she may reside in Lansingburgh, and under no circumstances will they again return to Waterford to live.

Miss Nolan says she is gaining in strength and enjoys sleeping on a good bed and living in a domestic manner again. She was confident of acquittal from the first, and could not realize for a moment that her life was in jeopardy. This may explain her apparent non-concern during the trial. Sunday afternoon she went for a ride into the country, and now she seeks quiet and rest.

In Sept. 1895, Elizabeth Nolan sued the county for $1,000, "for unjust and unnecessary imprisonment in the Ballston jail for nine months, and for injury to her person and fair name by an unjust and unfair accusation of murder."

Catherine may have assumed a different name after the trial. There is a "Sarah Nolan," b. 1872, employed as a mill worker, living in Lansingburgh in 1900, but whether they are one and the same can't be verified.