Lizzie lives: Fall River’s most infamous still sparks curiousity, and new book aims to tell all<\/p>\n
Lizzie Borden, Fall River’s most infamous resident.<\/p>\n
By Deborah Allard
\nHerald News Staff Reporter
\nFall River \u00e2\u20ac\u201dWhile everyone knows Lizzie Borden as the woman who may or may not have wielded the hatchet on Aug. 4, 1892, and bludgeoned her father and stepmother, Andrew and Abby Borden, to death, there may be another side of Lizzie that is far lesser known.<\/p>\n
Was she kind? Happy or sad? What were her interests? What was she like as a young girl? An old woman? And what was Fall River society like in her lifetime?<\/p>\n
That side of Lizzie can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be found in newspaper stories or court transcripts. But, there were many people who knew Lizzie in her youthful years on Second Street in the city\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s downtown and after she was acquitted of the heinous murders and lived at Maplecroft on French Street.<\/p>\n
The Fall River Historical Society\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s curator, Michael Martins, and assistant curator, Dennis Binette, have been working for the past four years on a new book focused on Fall River\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s most infamous resident. It is tentatively titled: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Parallel Lives: A Social History of Lizzie Borden and Fall River.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Loaded with excerpts from personal diaries and manuscripts, the reader will learn what it was like to live in a thriving textile city where the upper class resided on \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Hill\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and spent its time organizing and attending cotillions and maintaining a certain decorum. The reader will also learn about the scandals of the day. <\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re hoping to take orders by the end of the year,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Binette. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s intended to be a social history of Fall River whose framework is the life of the family of Andrew Borden.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
The book will span about a century in time, from Andrew\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s birth in 1823 to Lizzie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s death in 1927.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The idea was to paint a picture of the Fall River Lizzie Borden knew … her social set, where she did and did not fit in,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Binette said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s another dimension to her character.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Binette said until now, researchers have only met a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153very one-dimensional character. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got a wealth of new information that lets us look into the world of Lizzie Borden deeper and round out her character.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
The book will use others\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 voices and letters to cast a new light on Lizzie Borden, such as those from a young friend of Lizzie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not previously published. <\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Parallel Lives\u00e2\u20ac\u009d will be published by and sold exclusively at the Fall River Historical Society.<\/p>\n
Binette said he thinks a lot of people are going to be very excited about this book and about learning more about Lizzie.<\/p>\n
The Historical Society regularly receives letters, e-mail and phone calls from people researching Lizzie Borden and the case and trial. No matter how many years pass, the popularity of Lizzie never seems to diminish.<\/p>\n
Binette said the fact that Lizzie was a woman and the case remains unsolved has continued to fuel Lizzie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s popularity.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153There were lots of murders in the area that were unsolved, and you hear nothing about them,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Binette said.<\/p>\n
Lee Ann Wilber, manager of the Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast, which is toured by some 10,000 people a year, said: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the mystery of an unsolved case and seeing the actual murder site and the fact that she was a woman.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Fall River Historical Society spoke to the Fall River Herald about their plans to publish a new book on the social history of Fall River as it relates to Lizzie Borden. It is sure to be a best seller! Here is a link to the article by Deborah Allard. Lizzie lives: Fall River’s most […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,7,15,10,18,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-and-media-reviews","category-borden-buzz","category-case-related","category-fall-river-news","category-lizzie-4-sale","category-on-the-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lizzieandrewborden.com\/mondolizzie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lizzieandrewborden.com\/mondolizzie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lizzieandrewborden.com\/mondolizzie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lizzieandrewborden.com\/mondolizzie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lizzieandrewborden.com\/mondolizzie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lizzieandrewborden.com\/mondolizzie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1471\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lizzieandrewborden.com\/mondolizzie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lizzieandrewborden.com\/mondolizzie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lizzieandrewborden.com\/mondolizzie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}