Lizzie Borden Took an Axe: Who Is Lizzie Borden and What Did She Do? 

Andrew Borden and his wife, Abby, whom he had married more than twenty years earlier, after the death of Lizzie and Emma’s mother, were found brutally murdered in their home at 92 Second Street in Fall River on August 4, 1892. Despite the rhyme, neither was struck forty times, but the crime was, indeed, a vicious one. 

Abby Borden was the victim of as many as eighteen blows with a hatchet or similar weapon, most delivered to her head. Andrew was not home at the time of his wife’s murder, but he arrived home shortly thereafter, and was killed not long after that, struck ten or eleven times in the head and face with a similar weapon, probably in his sleep. One of the blows is said to have split his eye cleanly in two.

Accounts of that day are frequently confusing and often contradictory, but it would appear that only two other people were home at the time, Lizzie and the family’s 25-year-old live-in maid, Bridget Sullivan. Suspicion fell almost instantly upon Lizzie.

On August 8, Lizzie Borden testified at an inquest, where her own statements have been characterized as erratic and often contradictory, and where evidence was brought forth that “caused a change in the opinion among her friends who have heretofore stoutly maintained her innocence.” Shortly after the inquest, Lizzie was arrested for the murder of her father and stepmother.

Well, according to a jury, she didn’t. 

In June of 1983, Lizzie Borden appeared before a jury of her peers. Her inquest testimony was deemed inadmissible as evidence, and within a few weeks, the trial ended, and Lizzie Borden was acquitted of the charges against her. Contemporary newspaper accounts claimed that the jury deliberated for only forty minutes before delivering their verdict.

This wasn’t enough to satisfy many who continued to believe that Borden was guilty. Even today, she tends to be the most popular suspect in what ultimately remains an unsolved double murder. So, if Lizzie Borden did kill her parents, why would she have done it?

The theories are numerous. Though their mother had died when Lizzie was very young, the relationship between the Borden siblings and their stepmother was characterized as chilly, with Bridget Sullivan testifying that the two daughters rarely shared meals with their stepmother.

Tensions were said to be growing within the Borden household shortly before the tragedy. The two Borden daughters were allegedly unhappy about landholdings being given to Abby’s family, while an illness spread through the house, possibly caused by bad mutton.

More salacious theories are also popular, though they should all be taken with a grain of salt. Some papers at the time speculated that there might have been an incestuous relationship between Andrew Borden and one or both of his daughters. At the same time, subsequent writers have hypothesized that Lizzie may have been caught in a tryst with Bridget Sullivan, which precipitated the murders of her father and stepmother. 

It’s even been speculated that Lizzie had seizures and fell into a fugue state, committing the murders without even knowing she did it.

While Lizzie Borden did spend several months in custody while awaiting trial, she did not ever go to prison. Acquitted of all charges, Lizzie lived out the rest of her days in Fall River – though the town wasn’t always happy to have her back, and she was, at times, “ostracized by her neighbors.”

Lizzie and Emma didn’t move back into the house at 92 Second Street. Instead, they moved into a more modern house in the city, one that Lizzie dubbed “Maplecroft.” There, the sisters lived together until 1905, when Emma moved out, allegedly over Lizzie’s friendship with actress Nance O’Neil, referred to as the “American Bernhardt.” 

The two sisters never spoke again, though Emma continued to defend her younger sister. “I am still the little mother,” she said in an interview, “and though we must live as strangers, I will defend ‘Baby Lizzie’ against merciless tongues.”

So, what was it about Lizzie’s relationship with O’Neil that drove the two sisters apart? Of course, speculation that the affair was more than a friendship is common, though no one really knows, and O’Neil married Alfred Hickman in 1916, with whom she had co-starred in the film The Witch.

A lifelong spinster, Lizzie Borden never married and never had any children. She died in 1927, at the age of sixty-six, suffering from pneumonia after the removal of her gall bladder. Her older sister Emma died just nine days later, in Newmarket, New Hampshire. The two were buried side-by-side in the family plot in Oak Grove Cemetery, alongside their father, mother, and stepmother—Lizzie’s ostensible victims.

Immortalized in rhyme long before she died, Lizzie Borden’s life and putative crimes have been the subject of innumerable books, movies, plays, TV series, musicals, and even a ballet by Agnes de Mille. All have sought to answer, in various ways, the many questions that surround Lizzie Borden and the events at that house in Fall River. 

What happened to Lizzie Borden? How many people did Lizzie Borden kill? If she did swing the axe (or hatchet), why did she do it? Just what is the Lizzie Borden story?

Most recently, Lizzie became the subject of the fourth season of the Netflix true-crime drama series Monster, created by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan. Ella Beatty, star of If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, has been cast to play Lizzie, joining a staggering number of actresses who have done so over the years.

Known for an extremely loose relationship with its subject matter, Monster is unlikely to answer any of the many questions that remain about Lizzie Borden’s life and the tragedy that defined it, but it will serve as yet another installment in the enduring legend that has made this case a part of American folklore for more than a century.

Featured image: Wikimedia Commons