Murder, Culture, and Injustice: Four Sensational Cases in American History

I - Gendered Justice: Lizzie Borden and Victorian America

Lizzie Borden, at age 33, as she appeared a year after the murders. She was active in the Central Congregational Church, Christian Endeavor, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, and the Fruit and Flower Mission. Given Miss Lizzie’s appearance of schoolmarmish normality, most residents of Fall River found it difficult to conceive of her carrying out the brutal hatchet murders. Courtesy Fall River Historical Society I G E N D E R E D J U S T I C E L I Z Z I E B O R D E N A N D V I C TO R I A N A M E R I C A 5 h he old woman crashed to the floor, face first, with a reverberating thump. The killer sprang over her, wielding the hatchet maniacally. Blood and clumps of scalp flew in the air. The corpulent old woman lay still now, her arms trapped awkwardly under her body, but still the blows of rage came down, nineteen in all. A puddle of blood flowed from her head as she lay dying between the framed bed and a large mirrored bureau on the far side of the upstairs guestroom. There was no time to waste. The killer straightened up, dripping with perspiration as it was another hot summer day—August 4, 1892—in Fall River, Massachusetts . The killer hurried downstairs, wiping off the blood-soaked weapon—for the killer intended to strike again. After more than an hour, an interminable ticking away of the minutes, the dead woman’s husband came home at last. Old man Borden went upstairs for a few moments, but he used a separate set of stairs on the other side of the house and was in no position to discover his wife’s corpse. Knowing well the old man’s habits, the murderer was not surprised when he came back downstairs and made ready to lie down on his couch in the sitting room for a habitual midday nap. It would be his last. The old man was already breathing rhythmically as the killer crept behind the door that opened into the parlor. Old man Borden’s arms lay folded at his midsection. His legs, too long to rest comfortably on the upholstered mahogany couch, angled to the floor. The killer took a deep breath and drove the hatchet into the center of the old man’s face. He never budged from his recumbent position. The killer’s rage took hold again as the blows, twelve in all, crashed into the victim’s head with a sickening sound. The killer continued to strike, even after 7 I G E N D E R E D J U S T I C E L I Z Z I E B O R D E N A N D V I C TO R I A N A M E R I C A the blade ripped one of the old man’s eyes from its socket and left it dangling on his cheek. Heart pounding with an almost surreal excitement, the killer disposed of the weapon. Moments later, the old man’s daughter appeared at the parlor door and screamed for the family maid, who was resting upstairs: “Maggie! Come down quick,” she wailed. “Father’s dead .l.l. Someone came in and killed him!” Despite the passage of more than a century, the Lizzie Borden case remains Xone of the most notorious crimes in American history. The allegation of female parricide, with a hatchet no less, immediately made the case a national sensation. At first, however, the sheer brutality of the murders was enough to convince most people that no woman could have been responsible for such crimes. Most of the public rejected the possibility that the daughter of the elderly dead couple could have been responsible for the murders. At the time of the murders Lizbeth Andrew “Lizzie” Borden was thirty-two years old. She was five-feet, four-inches tall with light hair, typically parted in the middle and kept in a bun. Lizzie’s most distinctive feature, however, was her protruding gray eyes. Neither Lizzie Borden nor her sister Emma, aged forty-one at the time of the killings, ever married or even appears to have come close to the altar. Unmarried women today are not remarkable enough to be burdened with such an unflattering appellation as “spinster...