Lizzie Borden

Lizzie Borden entered the American consciousness on August 4, 1892, when police in Fall River, Massachusetts responded to the report of a murder at the Borden house. At 11:10 A.M., Lizzie Borden found her father hacked to death (with a hatchet, it turned out, not an axe) in the downstairs sitting room. A neighbor soon found Abby Borden, Lizzie's stepmother, hacked to death upstairs. Andrew Borden had returned home at 10:55, so his murder must have occurred between then and 11:10. Abby Borden had last been seen alive around 9 A.M., and based on her stomach contents, the medical examiner estimated her time of death at approximately 9:30 (Brown, 1991, pp. 79-82).

The police immediately suspected Lizzie because she and the maid, Bridget Sullivan, were the onl

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ared for by men at all stages of their lives-first their father, then their husband, and finally their son. For Lizzie, that meant Andrew Borden, a successful but cold man. Andrew Borden had risen from modest beginnings to become very prosperous. He earned his fortune as an undertaker, then used that wealth to acquire real estate. He also became legendary as the Scrooge of Fall River, so penurious that on the day of his death, he brought home a broken lock that had been discarded on the street (Kent, 1992, p. 2). His tight-fisted ways left him with a fortune of more than $500,000 at the time of his death (Brown, 1991, p. 53). In Lizzie's social circles, those who did not marry were doomed to the "awful" life of a spinster, living in her father's house. "Until the late nineteenth century, a young girl had only two possible reasons for leaving the home of her parents: marriage and the death of her parents" (Lerner, 1977, p. 43). Even in death, women did not achieve equality: The Fall River police, upon discovering Abby's body, closed the door to the room and returned downstairs to examine Andrew's body first (Kent, 1992, p. 20). Women had few educational opportunities, so when Lizzie graduated from high school, college did
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Approximate Word count = 1783
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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