Lizzie Borden Society Forum

Has anyone ever considered Lizzie's eye sight? She wore glasses and was even photographed wearing glasses.

She does seem to have some odd personality traits but I remember reading a book about Theodore Roosevelt who was practically blind till his family figured it out when he was about 13. He was a poor student, socially awkward, and a number of other things. Nobody checked eye sight in those days. That Lizzie wore glasses at a fairly young age in those days, implies she may have had very bad eye sight that was eventually diagnosed.

Lizzie wasn't a good student. She seemed to ignore people. There are other items that could be related to very bad eye sight. It doesn't make her guilty or innocent but if there was an intruder and she saw him running away, could she have seen him good enough to identify him? What does everyone else see here?

(I can foresee the Lizzie-is-guilty folks saying, "Aha! That's why it took so many whacks~Lizzie couldn't see what she was hitting." ~~~Now that that's out of the way we can have a serious discussion.)

She never indicated she saw anyone running away. So whether her eyesight was good enough to identify someone at a distance is a bit moot. I find it almost impossible to believe any stranger entered that house and committed the murders without Lizzie seeing or hearing anything. There is not a lot of direct evidence against her. No murder weapon, no apparent blood, no witnesses. However, the totality of circumstances makes it very likely that she committed this crime. She had motive and opportunity. No alibi other than her own inconsistent statements. Lying about the receipt of a note is particularly compelling. If there was no note, then Lizzie made it up. And if she made it up, she did so to protect herself. And the only reason to do that was if she had committed the murders. I believe it is extremely unlikely that anyone who was in a position to request Abby's presence via a note would not have come forward at some point. So it seems near certain there was no such note.

I think Lizzy was a lazy student versus a poor one-- but we will never know for sure. She loved to read.... And from the sounds of it, did a lot of reading once at Maplecroft. I wonder if she didn't read as much at 2nd street because she couldn't afford to buy many books on her allowance? She could have of course used the library.

We really don't know what was wrong with her eye-sight, do we? Was she what is called colloquially 'long-sighted' (in which case she would have seen any figure in the distance even if in a blur), or vice-versa? As Richard X has pointed out, she never mentioned seeing anyone leaving the property.

I've been short-sighted all my life, and have worn glasses for reading purposes. I have been a voracious reader, like Lizzie, since early childhood. Even today, after a lifetime of bad eyesight, I would be able to give a general description of any intruder who departed from my house, however, especially if he ran past me.

It's not known why Lizzie was a bad student. It could have been lack of confidence, the knowledge that she wasn't popular. That can affect a child's perception of school as a place to be enjoyed. Schools were rather grim and regimented places in the 19th century. Perhaps she secretly resented the discipline and dug her heels in.

It may have been that her father like many self-made men, sneered at 'book-learning' especially for girls, and that attitude imparted itself to Lizzie. Maybe, as Anthony says, she was a lazy pupil. We just don't know enough about her childhood to make a guess.

I expect she did go to the lending library before the murders, and I like the fact that Lizzie had not one but two reading rooms in her home.

I mentioned this primarily to consider if some of what seemed to be odd personality traits could have been poor eyesight, like seeming to ignore people for example. Kind of as an afterthought I wonder if she saw someone run away but couldn't describe him, or if her sight would have been so poor she wouldn't have noticed someone, say out the barn window. It's not particularly indicative of guilt or innocence but could help to describe her as a person. She obviously could see close with glasses or not, since she read, wrote and sewed. It probably doesn't matter, but it might.

I thought that the only times Lizzie was reported to ignore people (before the murders anyway) was when she was in close proximity to Abby's relatives when they visited No 92. (There was one other occasion, after the murders when one of the Whiteheads was serving in a shop and Lizzie was a customer.)

Admittedly, Abby's relatives weren't the most unbiased group you could meet with, and I've decided I don't believe the story in Sullivan about Lizzie killing a pet cat, a tale which came from 'little Abby' in her old age.

I realize that this thread hadn't been commented on in quite a while, but I just wanted to add that:

Didn't Lizzie begin to wear glasses in her 30s? I had perfect eyesight until I was 23 or so. My eyesight worsened (in one eye) after an auto accident.
I mean to say that just because she was wearing glasses in photos in adulthood, doesn't mean that she had poor eyesight as a child.

Maybe her poor record at school was more so due to lack of interest or realizing that women didn't really need to be serious about education in those days.

From reading her notes and letters, she seemed to be educated in grammar and spelling.

I don't think that poor eyesight would lead to ignoring people. I think that someone would have to be practically legally blind to do so, and Lizzie wasn't. In photos of her wearing glasses the lenses aren't very thick.

I agree Violette. I did not need my glasses until I was in my 30's. Lizzie enjoyed reading and passed time in jail reading Dickens. Which doesn't mean she couldn't have had vision problems. But if she struggled to read I wonder if she would have loved books as much.