Lizzie Andrew Borden was an alleged murderess. At the age of 32 she was accused of the double homicide of her father and stepmother.
Background
Lizzie Borden was born on July 19, 1860, in Fall River, Massachussets, United States, the youngest of the three daughters of Andrew J. and Sarah (Morse) Borden. Her mother died when Lizzie was two years old, and her father was married again in 1865 to Abby Durfee Gray. The stepmother, so far as is known, was kind to the two girls, Emma and Lizzie - for one daughter had died in infancy - but as they grew up, dissension flared in the family. Andrew Borden had become highly prosperous; at his death his estate was estimated at $300, 000 or more. He was president of a savings bank, director in two other banks, in textile mills and other corporations, and owned business and farm property. Nevertheless, the family lived simply with one servant in a plain, two-story frame house.
Career
About 1884 the father gave his wife a dwelling-house for the use of her half-sister. His daughters resented this; Lizzie quarreled with her stepmother over it and ceased to call her "Mother, " addressing her thereafter as "Mrs. Borden. " Borden sought to conciliate his daughters in 1887 by giving them some securities and his ancestral home, which they used as rental property, and in 1890 Lizzie traveled abroad with a party. She was secretary and treasurer of a Christian Endeavor Society, active in the Fruit and Flower Mission and Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and taught a mission Sunday-school class. The tension in the family increased, however, and the various members locked themselves in their bedrooms at night.
Late in July 1892 the two sisters - Emma was nine years older than Lizzie - went to visit friends in nearby towns, but Lizzie returned within a few days. On August 2 the two elder Bordens were attacked by vomiting, and Mrs. Borden believed they had been poisoned. The following day John V. Morse, brother of the first Mrs. Borden, came for a visit and was installed in the front bedroom. That evening Lizzie called on a friend and spoke vaguely of her father's having enemies and of prowlers about the house at night. The next morning, August 4, Morse and Borden went downtown rather early. Mrs. Borden went upstairs to attend to the guest room and was never seen again alive.
At 10:45 Borden returned, not feeling well, and lay down on the sitting-room sofa. Lizzie told him that his wife had been called out to see a sick friend. The maid, who had been ironing, went to her attic room for a nap. She was awakened when Lizzie cried to her to come down, saying that someone had come in and killed her father. Lizzie claimed that she had gone to the barn for about twenty minutes and had returned, finding the screen door open and her father dead. His face and headwere frightfully mangled with long cuts, evidently made by an axe. A doctor and others were called, and upon search of the house, Mrs. Borden was found in the front bedroom, also with the head shockingly mangled. Doctors judged that she had been killed about an hour and a half before her husband. The weapon was never found.
A week after the murder, Lizzie was arrested. The friend to whom she had confided her "premonitions" had found her shortly after the tragedy burning a dress in the kitchen stove. In spite of strong circumstantial evidence, the woman's trial, in June 1893, resulted in her acquittal; but so many believed her guilty that she was ever afterward ostracized in her home city, where she continued to live quietly for the rest of her life. Always known as Lizzie before the tragedy, she signed herself thereafter Lizbeth. She and her sister bought another home and lived together until 1905, when they separated for some reason unknown. Emma went to live in New Hampshire, where she died just nine days after her younger sister's passing.
Achievements
Lizzie Borden and her association with the murders has remained a topic in American popular culture mythology until today, and she has been depicted in various films, theatrical productions, literary works, and folk rhymes.
Religion
Borden was a member of the Congregational Church.
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
"Lizzie Borden took an ax and gave her mother forty whacks, when she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one. "
