Lizzie Borden Society Forum

I started rereading Victoria Lincoln's "A Private Disgrace" yesterday and something really stood out that I hadn't noticed before when I read it the first time. I don't know if I had read it too fast before, but this time I caught something I don't remember hearing here. I'll try to summarize what she said. When Morse came back from Iowa to Massachusetts he boarded with a friend, Isaac Hastings, but he had a horse business a fair drive away which was an inconvenient arrangement based on thrift. She says Morse and Andrew eventually came up with a better way for the two of them to be thrifty together. Andrew was fond of the Swansea place and did not want to sell it off. But it was expensive to keep up and pay for the hired hand. It was used for short stays since the sisters stopped vacationing much with the family. Morse liked Swansea and had an unmarried niece who would be willing to housekeep for him if he lived there. Andrew would be able to visit anttime he wanted.A note dropped off at the post office by Andrew to Morse for him to pick him up would free Andrew from the expense of having to keep a horse in town. The fantastic element enters with Andrew's undisclosed decision to put the farm in Abby's name before Morse moved in. The information got out through a leak in the banking circles. Victoria's grandfather thought that this explained how people first got the idea that just before the murders Andrew was making a will. He wasn't doing that at all, just putting the Swansea place in Abby's name. Lizzie may have gotten wind of this maybe in March when the horse was sold.Lizzie was a jealous person and was angry when Andrew put the Whitehead house in Abby's name. Andrew tried to rectify the situation by giving the girls the Ferry St. house. Now he was actually dense enough to be doing the same thing with the Swansea house and trying to keep it under wraps. If Lizzie found out it may have been the last straw. Two weeks before the murders Morse drove his niece out to Swansea to look at the place because she had not seen it before. Two weeks before the murders Emma was planning to go to Fairhaven, but did not like leaving her sister at home, and talked to Alice Russell about it. Two weeks before the murders Andrew bought back the Ferry St. house from the girls.Lizzie said she perhaps would go to Marion after all, traveling with Emma as far as New Bedford. But Lizzie did not go to Marionwhen she left Emma. She spent the rest of the day and the next, and the night following it,in a small boardinghouse on Madison Street. Victoria says that a painstaking D.A. found satisfactory evidence that during that time she made more than one unsuccessful aatempt to buy prussic acid. Having failed, she went to Marion for part of a day, but she was restless and abstracted and left by mid-afternoon to go back to her room on Second St. Andrew, during this time, mentioned to someone that there was trouble in his household. Lizzie stuck around the house like glue probably listening in on whatever she could hear. She was watching everyone's movements like a hawk. She probably then acted out in fury because she felt her father was betraying her all over again with the house issue. Morse may have clammed up about everything because he may have worried if Andrew changed his mind about the deal it would give Morse a motive for murder.
Anyway, I don't know how much of this is conjecture on Victoria's part, or if it could actually be true. It certainly would explain a few things. Any thoughts?

I'm left wondering why Andrew would want or need to put the Swansea farm in Abby's name. I'm also having trouble imagining a need for Andrew to tiptoe around Lizzie where his business transactions are concerned. Maybe the threat of a tantrum carried some weight in the Borden household, after all, he did try to pacify Lizzie and Emma after the Whitehead house transaction. Andrew would have resigned himself to the position of answering to his daughters, and I'm having difficulty imagining that.

I'm also wondering where Lincoln got all this information.

Would the information being withheld by the bankers be a form of withholding evidence? So much was made of the Whitehead house incident in the courts, it might have spoken to motive.

If you have a copy of the book, read chapter six and let me know what you think of her theory.

he "boarding house" was Mrs. Pool's house. She was a poor widow and her "boarders" were her brother-in-lawl and her daughter who worked as a clerk until she became ill. Lizzie "boarded" and then took the ailing daughter (Carrie) to Westpoort to visit her sister, Augusta Tripp. Carrie had phletis which had generally been interpreted as meaning she had tuberculosis.

Victoria Lincoln deals in partial truths...that also means they are partial untruths as well. Great reading but no provable sources for most.

Here's a link from the archives which sources a newpaper article related to Anna and Swanzey:

http://www.lizzieandrewborden.com/Archi ... sniece.htm

I don't think to much of it. It seems alot of trouble over one house, and Andrew was alittle to tight for all of it. I mean, he always struck me as the type that would either sell something or just keep it if it made money. As for tiptoeing around Lizzie and her tantrums, I don't think he paid her too much mind, not where his businesses were concerned. I think alot of times he just bought her things just to shut her up.

I wonder if Andrew was not in as good health as he has been presented. He was not a young man. He might have had a deal in progress with Morse that was not fully completed. He might have considered Abbie as being more "honorable" in completing the terms of the deal, while the more fashionable daughters might want to keep the summer home for themselves.

It is also possible that Andrew was planning a will. The house in Swansea was a duplex. Abbie could live in one half and Morse in the other. They were from the same generation and got along. Abbie having the deed would provide more assurance that Morse would look after her for the long term.

And if Abbie were to inherit the Swansea property, does this imply that the Second Street home would remain with the girls? I know probate was different in 1892 than it is today, but it is sometimes months or years before the probated assets are distributed.

Surely having Abbie in one place and the girls in another after Andrew's death would be good for them all.

Thats more along the line of what I was thinking also. That by putting the Swansea Farm in Abbie's name, Andrew was assuring her of a place to live after his death. A place where she could live in relative peace free from the girls and he was also providing Morse with a roof over his head in exchange for looking out after Abbie in her final years.

I was thinking that too- it would still be owned by Andrew, but the expenses of keeping it would be the same. Unless Morse would be paying him rent, then the expenses would be cut down or eliminated. If Abby expressed a worry to Andrew that the girls would probably refuse to let her live with them, she would not have a home to go to after he died. If he secretly arranged for Abby to have possession to the farm, then he would make sure she had a place of her own.I think Andrew did try to keep financial matters away from Lizzie because she probably raised a lot of hell when it came to money, her share, and her hated step mother. He probably had his hands full, being caught in the middle trying to appease his girls and take care of the future of his wife.

I tend to think Abby may have been happier living with her own family should Andrew have died before her, instead of moving out to Swansea farm to live on her own. Even with Morse possibly living with her. She had family living right there in Fall River that she was extremely close to. One half of the house they resided in had been bought by Andrew and was already in Abby's name. Could that have been part of the motive for the purchase of that property?

I agree Missy. I was thinking the same thing.
The family of Abbie seemed to express that she was dear to them, and if so, surly would have made arrangements to live together if the Borden girls had other plans.

Something Harry and I were discussing- that the transfer of 1/2 a house on Fourth St. into Abbie's name happened so long ago that it's hard to even imagine a person keeping a hot hatred that long to kill, as was done.

Andrew bought that Ferry Street property pretty much one and a half times, fattening his sister's and his daughter's bank accounts by a pretty large chunk- I don't see him as so tight in money matters when it came to his personal family.

(I also don't see Morse as compatable with Abbie- I don't know where that came from):?:

Pretty much comes from speculation and conjecture based on a hypothesis of putting the Swansea Farm in Abby's name. Sort of like the conjecture that Abby's 1/2 sister would take her in when we don't see any evidence of that. Like most things with this case we have a finite set of facts and we DISCUSS these with differing opinions and circumstances.

Please excuse me- I was speaking generally, and not personally to you.
I recall that possibly false report from Nellie McHenry that said Abbie wished Morse would go and get married- but it has an impact:

From The Knowlton Papers
...Mrs. Borden had been talking about Mr. Morse all the
week long saying "now he is here I suppose we will have him on our hands all summer, I dont see why he dont get married and go away".

I also didn't mean that Abbie's family would take her in, but more like she would take them in. She would have been better off financially- they could sell the Fourth Street property and move to a better location together.

Inquest, Mrs. Whitehead said about her 1/2 sister:
Q. Were you not on good terms with your half sister?
A. Very good, more so, than anybody in the world.
Q. I did not know but you would go there to see her?
A. I did occasionally.
Q. Did she come to your house?
A. Yes Sir, she came very often.


I've not been inside the farmhouse, tho others have. But I don't think it's too large

SteveS. @ Sun Aug 19, 2007 4:03 pm wrote:Pretty much comes from speculation and conjecture based on a hypothesis of putting the Swansea Farm in Abby's name. Sort of like the conjecture that Abby's 1/2 sister would take her in when we don't see any evidence of that. Like most things with this case we have a finite set of facts and we DISCUSS these with differing opinions and circumstances.

That's right, Steve. I had brought this up because I had read it in Lincoln's book as something she proposed, and I just wanted to discuss it.
It was another idea I hadn't heard before.

Not everyone has access to The Knowlton Papers and there is interesting supplemental info in there that I thought might be found useful to round out the picture. The comments about Morse- some believe them, some don't.