I want to be sure that what I've written is correct and that I didn't mix things up, which at this point is a good possibilty! 
Thanks StevenB, I appreciate all feedback!
Murder On Second Street
Around nine-thirty on the morning of August 4, 1892, Abby Borden, age XX was brutally killed with a hatchet. An hour and a half later her husband, Andrew Borden was also killed in the same manner. The famous Fall River, Massachusetts murder was never solved, however, Borden’s youngest daughter Lizzie, was soon arrested, tried, and later acquitted of the crime. Since then dozens of books, a play, a ballet, a movie, and numerous articles have been written on the crime each offering a different solution and suspect. The Borden home on Second Street played a key role in the murders and had been built in 1845 as a two apartment building. Andrew Borden bought the building in 1872 and converted it to a single family home and it was felt that the home’s maze like layout would have made it impossible for anyone to hide between the two murders. Writers on the murders perpetrated a myth that the house was badly built, cramped, and lacked places for a killer to hide. After staying in the home, now a bed and breakfast, I discovered that these claims were untrue. Using my visit of the Borden home I will take at look at a few of the theories writers have proposed over the years and show how don’t hold up when compared to an accurate plan of the home.
Today, the Borden home stands as one of the few surviving original structures in the Second Street area. The other buildings that stood when the murders took place fell victim to urban renewal in the 1960s. The Borden home survived because the owner at the time had just invested several thousands dollars in the property building a printing plant around two sides of the home. In the Borden’s time Second Street was a mixture of businesses, tenements, and single family homes located just off the busy South Main Street. Not an area where men of Andrew Borden’s wealth lived but he was known as being very frugal, overly so in fact. He moved his family to Second Street in 1872 from Ferry Street where Borden had started out as an undertaker. He later began investing in real estate and was involved in other businesses where he made his fortune. Instead of buying a home on “The Hill”, where all families of influence lived, Borden choose this two family tenement as his home located just a few blocks away from busy South Maine Street. It had no modern bathroom, no gas lights, and only cold water taps in the kitchen and basement sinks. It did have central heat and a toilet in the basement. Andrew Borden was so frugal that the family frequently sat in the dark at night to save on kerosene. The home was just a twenty-two by forty-seven foot box with no hallways to save space.This layout was to play a key role in the murders.
When Andrew Borden bought the house he had the wall between the bedrooms on the first floor removed to create a narrow dining room. The second floor door that connected the rooms in the front of the second floor; the guest room and Lizzie and Emma’s rooms, from the Borden’s bedroom in the back, was kept locked and furniture was placed in front of the door. In order to get from the Borden’s bedroom to the guest room, for example, Abby or Andrew had to go down the back stairs, through the downstairs rooms and up the front stair case to the guest room. For Emma to get to her room she had to walk through Lizzie’s The home had few closets and what closets it did were small and narrow. Theoretically, anyone moving about the home during their normal routine would have seen or run into anyone trying to hide.
One of the many problems with this case has been the confusion over what occurred before and after the killings and what time those events happened. Every writer has manipulated times and statements to support their theory. The time of Abby’s death was placed at about nine-thirty by the coroner which means she could have died between nine-fifteen and ten-forty-five. Bridget and Lizzie’s testimonies varied and because other witnesses couldn’t remember what happened and when it’s left writers a lot room to play with. Most people in Fall River back then didn’t own watches and relied on the town hall clock to stay on schedule. Also no one expected the murders to occur so of course no one was watching the time any way. If Lizzie committed the murders then she had good reason to lie and manipulate the events of that morning to protect herself. Bridget being innocent had no reason to do that and her statements often conflict with those of Lizzie. As the theories are discussed in this essay notice the conflicting times and statements between one book and another.
Victoria Lincoln argued for Lizzie’s guilt in her book A Private Disgrace Lizzie Borden by Daylight. Lincoln’s theory was that Lizzie suffered from Psychomotor Epilepsy described as:An epileptic seizure often associated with temporal lobe disease and characterized by complex sensory, motor, and psychic symptoms such as impaired consciousness with amnesia, emotional outbursts, automatic behavior, and abnormal acts. Also called psychomotor seizure, temporal lobe epilepsy.
and in one of her attacks Lizzie killed Abby. Lincoln relies on information from a doctor she interviewed, who, never having met Lizzie, made the diagnoses based on Lizzie’s actions before and during and after the murder. Lincoln claims these seizures occurred when Lizzie was having her menstrual periods and on August 4, she was having her period. After killing Abby, Lincoln claims, Lizzie dressed to go downtown to establish an alibi not expecting her father to return until at least noon. Unfortunately, Andrew Borden came home early forcing Lizzie to dispatch him the same way she had Abby. Lincoln did make the remark that: “.....Murder in epileptoid seizure is a medical rarity Lennox [the doctor she conferred with] who studied many thousands of cases, has found only two such instances..... As in hypnosis, the victim resists anything he would refuse to do while in full possession of his senses.” She goes on to suggest that Lizzie wanted Abby dead and this would make it possible for Lizzie to kill Abby while in a brown out.
The motive for Lizzie to kill her step-mother at this time, Lincoln claims, was that her father was about to transfer a property he owned, a farm in Swansea, Massachusetts, that the family had used as a summer home when Lizzie and her sister Emma were younger. Lizzie seemed determined to not let Abby have anything that Lizzie considered rightfully hers. Before this event, Andrew had given a property he owned to Abby’s family which had infuriated Lizzie (and Emma too, but probably Lizzie more) with the result that Andrew transferred another property to Lizzie and Emma to calm Lizzie down. The property proved unmanageable to the girls and Andrew had just bought it back. Lizzie and Emma made out on the deal. The Swansea sale to Abby is based on speculation and has never been proven. More likely what was going on was the Andrew, now XX years old was making out his will and Lizzie and Emma may have been afraid he would favor Abby over them and they might not get as much money as the felt they deserved.
Lincoln also falls into the same myth regarding the Borden home as other writers have. She often calls the house flimsy and once refers to it as “ a flimsy built, small house” and wonders why the occupants didn’t discover or notice certain events when they happened. The answer is of course that the house is very solid and well built.
To understand the rest of the events of that morning we need to look at the time frame in which Andrew Borden was murdered. These events are well documented and general counted as fact. We know by all accounts the events happened between ten-thirty and eleven-fifteen yet exact times have been debated over the years. Bridget, The families live in help, was outside washing windows and chatting with a neighbors maid. About ten-thirty she finished and was inside washing windows and reported that Andrew returned home at about ten-forty-five. Bridget testified that after Andrew entered the house he asked Lizzie where Mrs Borden was and Lizzie told him she had received a note and had gone out (for the record, Abby rarely left the house). Then he went upstairs to his room for a moment before returning to the dining room where he looked over some papers. The Lizzie helped him lie down on the sitting room sofa for a nap. At ten-fifty-five Bridget, now finished with the inside windows, went up to her third floor room to rest before making dinner. She claims she was in bed or in her room when the town hall clock struck eleven. At about ten past eleven Lizzie calls for Bridget who comes running down three flights of stairs (did she have to put on her shoes?). Lizzie declares that Father has been hurt and sends Bridget out for a doctor.
A neighbor, Mrs. Churchill, comes home from downtown and see’s Lizzie appearing agitated and standing in the back door from her kitchen window. The Churchill house is less than twenty feet away from the Borden’s back door. She calls out to Lizzie asking what is wrong, Lizzie replies that someone has killed father. Mrs. Churchill heads right over. Meanwhile Bridget returns, the doctor is out, Lizzie send her several blocks away to get another close family friend, Alice Russell. Mrs. Churchill arrives, enters the home, finds Andrew and then runs across the street to a stable where her son-in-law works to have him phone the police. The police receive the call at eleven-fifteen. A neighbor witnessed Borden’s return, verifying the time he returned and the call to the police was recorded in police records. Noticed all that has occurred between ten-fifty-five and eleven-fifteen. In just ten to fifteen minutes Andrew has laid down for a nap; Bridget goes to her room on the third floor; Andrew is killed; Bridget notified that Andrew has been “hurt” and sent to get a doctor; Mrs. Churchill is told Andrew has been killed and rushes over, enters the home, then leaves to get the police and returns. Where was Lizzie when her father is murdered? She claims to have been in the back yard eating pears form their trees then later states she was in the barn loft looking for metal to make sinkers, or looking for a bit of metal to fix a loose screen in her bedroom window. While there she ate a pear or two. Then she hears a “groan” and a “scraping” noise and returns to the house to find Andrew dead. Again, remember this all took place in not more than fifteen minutes.
While to many the Borden case is clearly an open and shut case, Lizzie is guilty yet managed to be acquitted, other writers have created other theories and suspects for the crime. Edward D. Radin wrote one of the first in depth books on the case in 1961. Radin’s theory was that Abby
ordered Bridget, the families Catholic Irish maid, to wash the windows that morning. A heat wave that had strangled the city had just broken and that day it was still hot but not as bad as it had been. Radin theorized that Bridget went mad and hacked Mrs. Borden to death. She then murdered Mr. Borden in order to prevent him from reporting the argument that Bridget had with Abby earlier that morning, for such a report would incriminate her. The fact that in all the statements taken regarding that mornings events no one spoke of any argument between Bridget and Abby and it is doubtful that Bridget would have spoken up against her employer. After all in Fall River in the 1890s there was no shortage of Irish maids looking for work. Instances of murders by the staff are numerous and include the famous French case of the Papin Sisters.
Radin places Bridget in the back yard vomiting between nine and nine fifteen, Bridget told investigators that she wasn’t feeling well that morning. When she returns she finishes the dishes and cleans the kitchen. At this time Abby is dusting the dining room and asks Bridget to clean the windows. This one of many flaws with Radin’s theory because according to him by the time this exchange took place Andrew had left the house. Also Lizzie is supposed to be in the Kitchen and if there had been an argument it would have been here that would have over heard it. Lizzie remains in the kitchen according to Radin possibly addressing wrappers and/or waiting for irons to heat up so she can iron her handkerchiefs. Lizzie remains in the kitchen until ten-forty. Radin claims Bridget killed Abby upstairs in the guest room while Lizzie was in the kitchen without being noticed by her. Abby weighed a full two hundred pounds and would have made some noise as she fell to the floor after being hit with the hatchet. Still Lizzie heard nothing and never left the kitchen. Bridget then comes down and makes her way through the kitchen with a bloody hatchet and goes outside where she presumably cleans up in the barn. She could have gone out the front door but that would have attracted Lizzie’s attention as the hired back then always used the back door. Then she washes the windows, stops in the middle of this chore and idly chats with the next door neighbors maid.
Not to contribute to stereotypes but by all accounts Bridget wasn’t well educated nor was she a very clever girl. She was easily scared and given to fits and was so hysterical when question by police that she claimed she was washing windows on the outside of the third floor. The Borden home is a substantial home built on a granite and stone block foundation with every block still in its place.. Today, the home, which is just over one-hundred and sixty years old, has not shifted or sagged. The doors inside are still straight and true as the day they were built. Walking through the home one is amazed at how solid the place feels. Nothing shakes, even busses at the bus stop across the street fail to rattle the home as they roll by. Still, as solid as the home is, a two hundred pound woman hitting the floor would have made some noise. Radin also fails to tell the reader what doors would have been opened or shut that morning. If Bridget showed up in the guest room with an axe and then shut the door, Abby may have been alarmed. The two doors from the kitchen to the dining room and to the sitting room would have been closed to keep the heat from the kitchen stove out of the main floor rooms. If Bridget killed Abby, she took and immense risk that Lizzie wouldn’t suddenly come upstairs. If Abby was dead and Bridget knew it why would she go ahead and wash the windows when supposedly that was the request that set her off on a killing spree. Also why didn’t she kill Lizzie too? It’s possible if everyone was where Radin places them that Lizzie could have heard Abby ask Bridget to clean the windows and Bridget would have had to do so to do establish an alibi. That gives Bridget way too much credit for intelligence that she probably didn’t have. Besides, why would Bridget murder Andrew, ninety minutes later? We have seen by Radin’s time line that he was gone by the time Abby asked Bridget to wash the windows. Could Bridget have held her anger for that whole time? The maid she was speaking with didn’t say Bridget appeared angry when she was interviewed. By ten-thirty-five Bridget is inside cleaning windows, Andrew, according to Radin arrives home at ten-forty and cannot get in because all the doors are locked (the doors were kept lock all the time). Bridget tries to unlock the front door and has problems and says something like “Pshaw” which causes Lizzie, now on the front stairs to laugh. Abby lies dead in the guest room just a few feet away from Lizzie, but between Lizzie and Abby’s body is a large Victorian bed that sits just three inches off the floor. Witnesses later claim that you could only see Abby’s body if you were standing on one particular step and looking for it. According to Radin..............
