As you may know, The Fall River Tragedy: History of the Borden Murders, by Edwin H. Porter, was the first book ever published on the case.
A crime reporter for the Fall River Daily Globe, Porter was one of the first on the scene that August 4th morning. He wrote regularly about the case for the Globe and attended the trial of Lizzie Borden in New Bedford, Massachusetts, in 1893. He wasn’t called a witness, but his name appears 12 times in the trial transcript.
Edwin died of tuberculosis at the age of thirty-nine in 1904. A daughter, Winifred Alice, died in 1919, at the age of twenty-one.
Father and daughter are buried together in an unmarked grave in St. Patrick’s Cemetery in Fall River, Massachusetts.
Porter’s importance to the case cannot be understated.
It is a barren place where the body of Edwin Porter lies. And nobody knows he’s there. His great legacy is not noted by a stone, even though we continue to purchase his book, read his words, study is news reports, and debate his assertions of Lizzie’s jailhouse remark. Something should be done about that, don’t you think?
It is our hope, that with a proper marker on the site of his burial, he will, at last, be immortalized in memory.
I made a film to accompany the GoFundMe page for the grave marker. Please take a moment to learn more about the sad short life of Edwin Porter and consider donating to his stone.
Thank you.
And here is the GOFUNDME page for the appeal.
