Lizzie Borden Society Forum

Knowlton did a good job making a solid case that there were two different categories of Lizzie stories about going back into the house when she found her father:

Category 1: Distressing Noise Investigation

Version 1A: I heard a scraping sound and went in.
Version 1B: I heard a groan and went in.


Category 2: Bored with Chores

Hosea Knowlton: When you came down from the barn, what did you do then?
Lizzie Borden: Came into the kitchen.

Hosea Knowlton: What did you do then?
Lizzie Borden: I went into the dining room and laid down my hat.

Hosea Knowlton: What did you do then?
Lizzie Borden: Opened the sitting room door, and went into the sitting room, or pushed it open; it was not latched.

Hosea Knowlton: What did you do then?
Lizzie Borden: I found my father, and rushed to the foot of the stairs.

Hosea Knowlton: What were you going into the sitting room for?
Lizzie Borden: To go up stairs.

Hosea Knowlton: What for?
Lizzie Borden: To sit down.

Hosea Knowlton: What had become of the ironing?
Lizzie Borden: The fire had gone out.

THE FIRE HAD GONE OUT.

(Note: I have trouble analyzing this case because Lizzie and others often use language in a way that is not the actual literal meaning of the words, like saying never when they mean seldom and things like that, so in this case the fire had gone out may not mean the fire had gone out but rather the fire was too low to heat my irons).

Lizzie puts her hat down in the dining room opens the door to the sitting room, finds her father, runs to the rear stairs and calls up to Bridget.

1. At what point does the fire get lighted again and who lights the fire?

2. Was the roll of paper already burned before Lizzie went to the barn since when she came back from the barn, the fire was out?

3. Was the fire really out or did Lizzie just answer imprecisely?


Philip Harrington: I then went down stairs through the front hall, through the sitting room and into the kitchen. As I entered the kitchen, I saw several officers, I cannot recollect them now, because I did not pay much attention to them, being so accustomed to see them around, one of them I think was Devine again. Dr. Bowen stood there close by the stove. I walked by him to the east.

Hosea Knowlton: This does not in any way effect Dr. Bowen. For any reason did you look in the stove?
Philip Harrington: Not at all.

Hosea Knowlton: Not at all? What did you see in the stove?
Philip Harrington: I was going to tell what he had in his hand. When he took the cover off the stove, the fire was very low, and there appeared to be, or there was, rather larger coal, or larger remains of something that appeared to be burnt paper, and it was quite large. I should say quite large judging from the size of the stove, comparatively speaking.

Hosea Knowlton: Why did you say it looked like burnt paper?
Philip Harrington: Because I have seen burnt paper before, that is all the reason.

Hosea Knowlton: Where was it?
Philip Harrington: On the back part of the fire place, or the fire part, whatever you call it, the fire part of the stove.

Hosea Knowlton: You mean the place where the fire is?
Philip Harrington: Yes Sir.

Hosea Knowlton: What sort of a fire was it that there was there?
Philip Harrington: I could not swear that, but there was a small red spot down in the center.

Melvin Adams : Not a blood spot.
Philip Harrington: A small spark of fire there that looked to me like coal, but that I would not swear to.

Hosea Knowlton: You could not tell whether it was a coal or wood fire?
Philip Harrington: No Sir; but that is the impression I had at the time, it was coal.

Part of what I'm trying to get at is: Lizzie was 32 years old and had been around that type of stove for decades. Given the state of the fire, the abundance of old newspapers, extremely dry cut wood from the previous winter, the coal - and Bridget's own demonstrated quick fire stoking before breakfast and planned quick fire stoking before the noon meal - it seems like that fire could be routinely stoked to meal cooking temperature in 30 minutes or less. Lizzie had 90 minutes and one feeble hot coal was all she managed.

That is very interesting Lorcan. You’d think the girls would be experts at stoking a fire.
I would imagine the stoves back then were like a garbage can in some ways, and hopefully it was something innocent that Dr Bowen burned,
Did Cam ever answer the riddle about Bowen’s burning? He likes to leave riddles from time to time.

I really enjoyed how you layed out those variants side by side, that’d be a big project to go through the case, and organize them all.
That’s nice there’s so much testimony to draw from in the case.

One of the authors (maybe Spencer) really dug deep into the stove fire, how fast irons heat and cool and Lizzie's & Bridget's comments. I think there are some really good insights that could come out of your study.

Camgarsky - excellent memory - William Spencer's book, The Case Against Lizzie Borden, covers the ironing and implications of all the testimony about it from page 697 - 704. I definitely won't give away his excellent work, we should all buy the book if we don't already have it. I'm only 100 or so pages in, but I skipped ahead to find it. No need for spoiler alerts at this point for me.

Another thing - like what you said about how long it took the iron flats to heat & cool, how many iron flats would be on the stove at one time so the hot ones can be swapped out - that type of 1892 task needs a timespan in the knowledge graph I am creating. So, a claim object would have a datasource linking it to the various lines of testimony, a location, a link to each person, and a timespan window. It would also include links to evidence for, evidence against, notes, etc.

One thing that really woke me up to this need for 1892 timespans is Abby "making the bed." That is an entirely different and much louder and longer task than in 2026. See below as we see what hit the hay originally referred to.

In 1892 America, especially in a respectable Boston-area household, “making the bed” after a night’s sleep was not just pulling up blankets. It was part ventilation, part hygiene, part reshaping the mattress, and part formal presentation.

The usual morning sequence was roughly this:

1. **Strip or open the bed immediately after rising.**
The sleeper, maid, or woman of the house would pull off or turn back the bedclothes so the bedding could air. Household manuals emphasized opening the bedroom windows and getting fresh air into both the room and bedding. One maid-servant guide says the occupants should strip the beds on rising and open the windows; the covers were then spread over chairs so they did not drag on the floor. ([Project Gutenberg][1])

2. **Air the bedding.**
Sheets, blankets, quilts, coverlets, pillows, and sometimes the mattress itself were exposed to air. This mattered because beds absorbed body moisture overnight, and ventilation was treated as a health and cleanliness issue. The same guide recommends leaving the mattress and bedclothes exposed for **fifteen minutes to half an hour** with windows open.

3. **Turn, beat, and level the mattress.**
This is the part most unlike modern bed-making. Mattresses were commonly hair, wool, cotton, husk, straw, or combinations, sometimes with a feather bed or feather topper in older-fashioned households. They could compact, lump, or hollow. Instructions from early housekeeping manuals say to turn the mattress daily, sometimes end-to-end, sometimes side-to-side, and give it enough “thumps and punches” to make it level and even.
In 1892, a Boston household might well have a woven-wire spring and a hair or cotton mattress rather than an old-style rope bed and straw tick, but the practice of turning, beating, and airing still applied.

4. **Possibly shake, smooth, or beat feather bedding.**
If a feather bed or feather mattress was in use, it required more manipulation than a firm mattress. Feather beds showed every depression and had to be shaken or worked back into shape. This might involve lifting corners, redistributing feathers, beating pillows, and smoothing the ticking. Some recollections and material-culture discussions describe using a hand, broom handle, or similar implement to smooth the feather mass, though that detail is more variable by household and period than the basic airing/turning procedure.

5. **Dust or sweep while the bed aired.**
The room was often tidied while the bedclothes were airing: washstand water emptied, slop jars/chambers dealt with, visible dust removed, floors brushed or gone over with a carpet-sweeper. One maid routine has the worker strip the beds, turn mattresses, hang bedclothing over chairs, use the carpet-sweeper, empty bedroom water, then return later to make the beds. ([Project Gutenberg][1])

6. **Rebuild the bed in layers.**
The bed was then remade carefully:

* mattress pad or cover, if used;
* lower sheet, stretched tight and tucked under;
* upper sheet, often wrong-side-up so the turned-back hem showed the right side;
* blankets, tucked at the foot and then sides;
* spread, quilt, Marseilles coverlet, or other daytime cover;
* bolster and pillows, beaten, smoothed, and arranged;
* shams or decorative day pillows if the household used them.
Elizabeth Hale Gilman’s 1911 *Housekeeping* gives a very explicit version of this sequence, including the sheet orientation, tucked corners, blankets, spread, bolsters, pillows, and shams.

7. **Finish the bedroom.**
After the bed was made, clothes were put away, drawers closed, objects straightened, dust removed, windows partly closed, and shades adjusted. The goal was not merely a usable bed but an orderly chamber.

8. **Open the bed again at night.**
In more careful households, the bed was not simply left as made. In the evening, spreads and shams were removed or folded back, the covers were turned down, water was refreshed, and the room was prepared for sleeping. A maid-servant guide describes removing spreads and day-pillows, turning down beds, closing blinds, and bringing iced water.

For a **Boston 1892** setting, the most plausible picture is: windows opened; bedding pulled apart and aired; mattress turned or beaten; pillows beaten; washstand/chamber work done; room brushed or swept; then the bed tightly remade with sheets, blankets, spread, and pillows. In a middle-class household with one servant, some of this might be done by the maid; in a larger household, chamber work could be divided; and in a servantless or lightly staffed home, women of the family often did the beds themselves. The 1890s maid manual specifically notes that in households larger than two or three people, women of the family might look after the beds while the maid handled stripping, brushing up, and water disposal.

So, for interpretive purposes: **making a bed in 1892 could easily involve 15–30 minutes of airing plus several minutes of physical handling**, especially if the mattress or feather bedding needed beating, turning, smoothing, or redistribution. It was noisy enough to involve thumping, brushing, movement of chairs, shifting bedding, and possibly striking or punching the mattress—but how audible it would be through a wall or door would depend on the bed type, floor construction, distance, and how vigorous the housekeeper was.

Your post reminds me that Lizzie, according to Officer Fleet saw Abby in the guest room as she was going downstairs. So with all the talk about pillows, pillow slips, making up the room and bed, closing the door which by the way, it was found open seems to say that there was no way that she could not have been seen in that room with all that work going on given how much it took to get that room ready. Another thing that is strange as those windows were not open and the there was very little light in that room.
Sort of makes it hard to see what you’re doing in a dark room.

Lorcan your attention to the odd little details of the case delights me so much that it has tempted me to brave posting again. I have also puzzled over the fire thing -- more on why Knowlton insists Lizzie had no real interest in heating her flat irons, no intention of finishing her handkerchiefs, and yet also made a big point of how the fire was burning when Harrington saw it. Bridget didn't feed the fire all morning, Lizzie was the only one who said she did, so Lizzie must have been interested in heating her irons. Possibly just to keep her pretend effort at her task going, but still... As for fire itself, I have no idea what it's like to keep one alive in an 1892 cook stove, but I know what it's like to try in the fire pit in my back yard, and it follows its own weird logic -- flaring then dying, and seeming dead then surprising me by flaring again. (I also have been haunted about how the Pacific Palisades fire was started from a previous patch of wildfire that had been put out by the fire department several days earlier, then flared up again when the wind came.) My point it, I don't know that it's fair to assume that Lizzie had some special control over how the fire would behave in that stove, or to assume she was lying in what she believed was happening with it. I think your question, was she not being in precise in describing the fire is a good one, she might have been imprecise because the fire was behaving imprecisely. Then again, she may also have been a guilty liar.

And yes Inspector, the dark room. Whoever the killer was, Lizzie or an intruder, would probably want darken the room and close the blinds after leaving Abby dead on the floor. But as for Lizzie telling Fleet she saw her up there, I am always torn between thinking it a Freudian slip and she told the truth of when she last saw Abby as she approached her with a hatchet, or innocent Lizzie did see her up there sometime before she went downstairs, maybe opened her bedroom door to get air flowing in as she got ready for the day and glimpsed Abby in there (she said she preferred to keep it open in the summer), but really did see her for the last time when she spoke to her in the dining room. Wish I knew which!

Yes, That’s two exclusives for Fleet I think:
1) Andrew had a visitor around 9:00 AM Thursday ,
2) Lizzie said she saw Abby in the guest room.

Makes me believe one or both were told to him straight from Lizzie.

Just to add, and correct me if I’m wrong, but in Lizzie’s inquest she stated that the first time she saw a man snooping around the side door and running around towards the back yard, she did NOT tell her dad, rather she hurriedly got inside the house via front door.
This being in the evening as I recall
This seems incredulous due to how she was seemingly afraid,

The second similar event she stated that she informed her dad.
Hmm…..

If Lizzie isn’t telling the truth, here is the genius of her thinking.
Knowing the first sighting could be easily verified by Emma, and probably Bridget, as any naturally protective dad would have given advice to the ladies of the house—-in my opinion, it is almost certain he would, Lizzie sees the predicament, and skillfully she protected herself from this potentially damaging (first sighting.) She told no one.
Why Knowlton didn’t surprise Emma, and Bridget at trial about the first sighting is clear—she says she didn’t tell her dad.

However, she admits telling about the second sighting which is closer to the time of the crime,and Emma is away.
I personally would have surprised Bridget about the snooper just to see if she would help Lizzie or not.