The Inquest
The official inquest into the murders of Andrew and Abby Borden began on August 9th, before Judge Josiah C. Blaisdell of the Second District Court. Examining the witnesses was District Attorney Hosea M. Knowlton. It is Lizzie Borden's inquest testimony, conducted over three days, that has always stood as a central pillar of debate in the assessment of her guilt or innocence, and it was Knowlton's aggressiveness in his examination of her that helped produce such a provocative testimony.Hosea M. Knowlton was born in 1847, the son of a Universalist minister, and grew up in New Bedford, Massachusetts where he studied law. After attending the Harvard Law School, he was admitted to the bar and set up shop as an attorney in New Bedford. He entered the political arena by serving one year as state senator; he was thereafter appointed District Attorney of the Southern District of Massachusetts, and was executing that office when he took on the task of prosecuting the Commonwealth's case against Lizzie A. Borden of Fall River.
The inquest proceedings were held in a courtroom over the police station in Fall River. Lizzie had made a request to have her family attorney, Andrew J. Jennings, present, but was refused this request under a state statue providing that an inquest may be held in a private manner. This ruling was controversial since it was later revealed that, at the time that Lizzie took the witness stand, she had already been informed by the City Marshal and the Mayor that she was the prime suspect in the murder; a warrant for her arrest had already been issued; and she was not directly informed by Knowlton of her constitutional rights in testifying. Lizzie's testimony, as a result seemed more like a police interrogation meant to break a suspect into confessing, than it did an objective examination intended to gather facts and evidence related to a crime. In fact, Knowlton was later to write to State Attorney General Pilsbury, calling Lizzie's testimony a "confession"; his confidence in her guilt based on her three days on the stand was rock-solid.
Lizzie's poor performance during the examination may be explained by the shocking fact that the family physician, Doctor Bowen, had been administering doses of morphine to calm her nerves. This practice started a few days before the inquest, and it is unknown if Dr. Bowen was supervising the drug use on a daily basis. Either way, morphine must have put Lizzie into a weird state of disorientation, and quite possibly hallucinations. At various times in her testimony, she seemed either confused ("I don't know it! I don't know what your name is!") or filled with a confrontational arrogance that could not have won her any favor with Knowlton ("Some of your questions I have difficulty answering because I don't know just how you mean them").
Knowlton began with some simple questions about Lizzie's family, but soon tried to extract from Lizzie what she knew about her father's business affairs, and particularly his real estate investments. Lizzie professed ignorance of such matters, and even claimed she knew nothing about a will or any marriage settlement he may have had with his wife. The question of the relationship between Abby Borden and the sisters was touched on, and that was where Lizzie and Knowlton first locked horns. Lizzie freely admitted that there had been differences of opinion, particularly five years prior over some real estate on Fourth Street, and she hinted at troubles that forced her to call Abby "Mrs. Borden". When asked if things were cordial between them, Lizzie boldly replied, "It depends upon one's idea of cordiality perhaps." It may be to Lizzie's credit that she was responding as honestly as possible, but considering the very real possibility that she could be arrested, tried and hung for the murders, it clearly would have been more advisable for her to have carefully phrased her answers to Knowlton's barbed questions.
Knowlton then reviewed the events of John V. Morse appearing at the house; of Lizzie's illness on Wednesday afternoon; of her visit to Alice Russell (not discussing the details of the conversation); and of her account of the Thursday morning leading up to the tragedy. Nothing Lizzie stated in this portion of the testimony contradicted any of the other testimony from Morse, Bridget and Alice Russell that was ultimately to be taken at the trial. It was when Lizzie was pressured to remember exactly where she was when her father arrived home that things started to break down.
Bridget Sullivan, the maid of the Borden home, was washing the sitting room windows when Andrew Borden returned from his errands downtown. He had trouble opening the front door, not expecting it to be locked, and Bridget went to the door to let him in. As she struggled with one of the locks, she let out a small exclamation that caused someone at the top of the front stairs to giggle. Bridget swore that she recognized Lizzie Borden's voice, which would have put Lizzie within a few yards of the dead body of her stepmother. Although it had been determined that a person standing in that position at the top of the stairs would have had their line of sight of the dead body obscured by the guest room bed, Lizzie's presence there would have been significant. Under continued pressure to remember where she had been when her father returned, Lizzie contradicted herself, claiming at first to have been in the kitchen reading a magazine, then claiming to be in the dining room with her ironing equipment and handkerchiefs, and then claiming to have been coming down the stairs. When Knowlton pointed out these contradictions, Lizzie said desperately, "I don't know what I have said. I have answered so many questions and I am so confused I don't know one thing from another."
Lizzie also showed inconsistency about what happened after her father arrived home. She described him taking off his boots and putting on his slippers, something improbable considering that the crime photograph showed him with his boots on. She claimed that the time interval between his arrival and the discovery of his body was no more than fifteen or twenty minutes, an estimate that is highly likely; yet, according to some of her earliest alibis given to the police, she had been out in the barn for a half-hour. Now her trip was reduced to anywhere between ten and twenty minutes. Also, she was now looking for lead sinkers, whereas in previous reports she had been looking for either a piece of iron or tin to fix a screen door.
When trying to pin down with accuracy some details about Lizzie's trip to the barn, her motivation to find the lead sinkers, and her knowledge of her own fishing equipment, Knowlton seemed frustrated and suspicious. "You did not answer my question and you will, if I have to put it all day," he announced as Lizzie dug herself deeper into contradictions. When trying to draw out of her what she could have done in the barn that would have occupied a full twenty minutes, she replied, "I can't do anything in a minute." The entire line of questioning, as aggressive and confrontational as it was, may have been completely unnecessary, since the unquestioned assumption was that Lizzie was in the barn for twenty minutes or more. In reality, she may have been there less than ten. Knowlton's belief, of course, was that she may not have been in the barn at all, but in the house, murdering her father.
Knowlton's behavior reached a level of unabashed cruelty when he asked Lizzie about the discovery of her father's body. Did she remember seeing the gashed face covered in blood, the eye ball hanging out? Lizzie responded by covering her face for several minutes, disturbed by the sudden graphic description that Knowlton thrust into the examination. Why Knowlton assaulted her with these sudden violent images is hard to tell, but he may have been so convinced of Lizzie guilt, that her arrogant composure enraged him. Many of the policemen who interviewed her on August 4th felt that she was acting too calmly in an effort to avoid suspicion. Either way, the inquest was meant to investigate the crime, and not to break down a witness during a brutal interrogation, an activity that Knowlton was perilously close to committing.
Knowlton asked Lizzie about the hatchets and axes found in the cellar, and she denied any intimate knowledge of them. He asked her how she thought some blood could have gotten on one of the hatchets and she describes an incident from the year previous, when her father had decapitated some pigeons that had made their way into their barn. She did not know how the heads had been removed, but she recalled witnessing the lifeless bodies afterwards. "Their heads were gone, that is all," she says plainly. One can only speculate if this incident was one of several that drove Lizzie towards an intense hatred of her father.
Lizzie was recalled to the witness stand two days in a row, resulting in her testifying on three distinct days. On the last day, she was asked about her visit to the pharmacy on South Main Street to purchase prussic acid, which she denied having done. She was also asked if she remembered taking a trip down to the cellar on the evening of August 4th with Alice Russell. Lizzie claimed she could not remember what day it had been, something which rings true, especially if it was done in total innocence.
Lizzie's total performance was poor, but she can be applauded for some feisty strength in her behavior. After all, she was on a witness stand, under increasing pressure from Knowlton, and knew also that she was suspected of the crime and that an arrest might be imminent. She was also suffering the mind-altering effects of morphine use. It is certainly plausible under these circumstances that Lizzie may very well just have had a hard time remembering exactly where she was at any given moment, or whether she had taken a trip to the downstairs privy on one night or another. This would especially be so if her visit was purely innocent and of such little consequence that it did not stay in her memory.
On August 11th, 1892, the same day that Lizzie Borden concluded her testimony, she was formally arrested by Marshal Hilliard and conducted to the matron's quarters at the police station in Fall River. She was not to see her home again until after the verdict at the criminal trial was reached on June 20th, 1893.
The transcript of the inquest testimony of Lizzie A. Borden, taken from August 9th to August 11th, 1892, is a remarkable document in many ways. For one thing, it is the only time that we hear Lizzie Borden under oath answering questions about the murders in her own words. She was never to testify or comment upon the affair again for the rest of her life, at least not publicly.
Secondly, the entire testimony was almost lost forever to history, since no copies of Volume 1 of the Inquest are known to exist. The only reason that we have a transcript at all is due to the fact that on June 12th, 1893, during the height of the criminal trial, the Evening Standard of New Bedford, MA published it. This was also the same day that the Superior Court ruled that the testimony was not admissible as evidence.
We can read this document in one of several ways. It is wide open to interpretation, depending upon your own belief in Lizzie's guilt or innocence. The examination can be seen as an unfair assault upon an innocent woman, a determined badgering of her into making self-incriminating statements; or it can be seen as a dramatic vignette featuring a murderer painted into a corner by a very skilled attorney who was determined to not let her get away with any alibi or concocted story. Regardless of any belief about her guilt or innocence, the haze of paranoia and morphine lays over the entire inquest testimony like a foggy cloud.
