The Prelude to the Crime

The house at 92 Second Street in Fall River, Massachusetts was, in 1892, almost half a century old. It had been inhabited by Andrew Jackson Borden and his family for nearly twenty-one years. A modest one-family home in the Greek Revival style, it was equipped with several bedrooms, a generous backyard with a two-level barn, and a basement with several cellars. To many today who visit the house in its restored state, it is a pleasant Victorian family city residence, quaintly suburban, bathed in sunlight and quite accommodating. This is contrary to the myth that Andrew Borden had created for his wife and children a humorless and dark hovel with no corridors or electricity, with rooms piled atop each other to save construction money. Some have contended that the structure was so lacking in privacy that the tragic murders of August 4th, 1892 may be explained away solely as a consequence of the cruel stinginess of the house itself and its effects on the family.

In fact, the house was originally built for two families, and the separation (not lack) of hallways from the inner rooms was an intended design choice meant to preserve the families' private entrances. Andrew had the house renovated for use by a single family, turning two bedrooms on the first floor into a dining room, and converting the upstairs kitchen into a master bedroom. His improvements on the house have actually served to open it up, rather than constricting the space available. And while Andrew's hesitancy to spruce up the residence with electricity, with private bathrooms, or with city water is undeniable, such reluctance was, in all likelihood, quite appropriate for a man born into the 1820s who would be slow to adopt such new-fangled technologies. Thomas Edison had only introduced electric lighting into New York City in 1882, and towns and villages across America were just getting around to experimenting with it by the mid-1890s. For a seventy-year old man to prefer a kerosene lamp over a light bulb at that time is akin to a seventy-year old in the 1980s having little interest in buying a personal computer or a VCR. This much we know: understanding the various attributes and subtleties of the house at 92 Second Street is a critical element in understanding the Fall River Murders of 1892, one of the most famous in the annals of American crime history.

The house then stood on a gently-sloping elm-lined street amongst others of its kind. The block was a pleasant inner city street of private homes just one block away from South Main Street, the busy thoroughfare where commercial shops, vendors and office buildings generated a non-stop flow of people. Andrew wanted to be close to his business, and during a brisk one-hour perambulation, he could get a shave at the barber, retrieve his mail at the post office, transact some business at one or more banks, check up on one of his commercial properties, and stop to chat with friends, neighbors, and business associates. On Anawan Street and South Main, just one block from his home, was his new pride and joy: the Andrew J. Borden Office Building, on the same corner where he and his long-time business partner, William Almy, had maintained a furniture store for many decades. Andrew, on the eve of his murder, was semi-retired; but he was nonetheless still collecting rent for his real estate properties, still sitting on the board of directors of a mill or two, as well as those of a few banks. He was affluent and watching his money prosper, although there is little or no evidence that he had a will.

The house at the time was inhabited by five people: Andrew and his second-wife, Abby Durfee Gray Borden, and his two daughters from his first marriage, Emma Lenora and Lizzie Andrew. An Irish maid, Bridget Sullivan, had been in the house for two-and-a-half years and considered it one of her better jobs since coming to America as a domestic. Yet there is a sixth character we must become acquainted with: the house itself.

Although 92 Second Street had been renovated from a two-family into a one-family, it was still, in some ways, a house divided. The single door in Lizzie's bedroom, which separated the front of the house from the master bedroom of Andrew and Abby, had been curiously locked on both sides, and Lizzie's bed had been pushed against it; this odd arrangement effectively cut the house in half. To get from Lizzie's room to Andrew's room thus required going down the front staircase, crossing the entire length of the house to the rear, and then ascending the back staircase off the kitchen. At the time that Abby Borden, Lizzie's step-mother, was found dead in the guest room upstairs, the front staircase would have been the only escape route available to the killer.

Andrew kept his bedroom door locked at all times, but, curiously, he placed the key in plain sight on the fireplace mantle in the sitting room. It was said that he had started this practice in the spring before the murders, after the house had been burgled. There was much protocol surrounding the locks in the house. The front door was barricaded with a bolt, a spring lock, and a key lock. The rear kitchen door was locked as well, and the screen door, used during the day, had a hook and eye latch. More locks were evident on the hatch and door leading down into the basement from the backyard. During the trial, as various people described the locks with which the house was equipped, and the security protocols followed by the Borden family, a picture emerged of the house residents as one under siege, possibly from themselves. Indeed, one of the last acts of Andrew's life was to stop into one of his properties on South Main Street that was undergoing construction and rescuing a broken lock from the floor, slipping it into his pocket before walking off to his doom.

However, the Bordens were an undeniably wealthy family living on a busy downtown thoroughfare that was normally crowded with pedestrians and street vendors, horse teams and passersby. The almost-paranoid behavior of Andrew and his locks may very well have been rooted in a common-sense concern about home security. If the 1892 murders were indeed committed by a random tramp from the street, or by a vindictive client, as some have speculated, then Andrew's obsession with closed and secured doors would have been more than justified.

In the weeks leading up to the murders, Emma was away staying with friends in Fairhaven, and Lizzie was scheduled to join some friends in Marion for some fishing. Lizzie had been there previously but aborted her trip due to an unexpected depression and sense of dread that someone was trying to harm her family. She was in Fall River expecting to attend a meeting at her Congregational Church, but on the evening before the murders, confessed to her friend Alice Russell that she had decided to return to Marion. Her alibi for her father's murder, that she was in the barn looking for lead for sinkers, is related to this decision.

On August 3rd, John Vinnicum Morse, who was Andrew's brother-in-law and Emma and Lizzie's uncle, came to stay with them. Five individuals all together were staying at the house at the time of the tragedy: Andrew, Abby, Bridget, Lizzie, and John. The outsiders that we must become acquainted with included Alice Russell, a family friend who lived around the corner on Borden Street; Mrs. Adelaide Churchill, a widow who lived next door; and Doctor Bowen, the family physician who lived across the street. Once the dead body of Andrew Borden was discovered on the morning of August 4th, this cast of players began a complex interplay that intersected their paths and divided their loyalties, both in the immediate police invasion of the house and during the long-term incarceration of Lizzie Borden and her subsequent trial.

The Borden sisters were adults living in their father's house: Emma and Lizzie were 42 and 32 years-old, respectively. According to accounts, they dreamed of someday living somewhere better, most likely the Hill, the elevated rise of land north of their city neighborhood. The Hill was the locale where the affluent textile tycoons and bankers maintained their opulent homes, and where young women, sometimes with less family wealth than had Lizzie, were able to enjoy more respectable living conditions. The Borden sisters must often have felt at odds with their father's old world ways and frugal manners. According to Lizzie herself, she was sometimes embarrassed and shocked by her father's business abstractions and by his seeming lack of empathy. Although he was a well-to-do businessman and had acquired a good deal of wealth, he had also acquired a reputation that tarnished their self-esteem. To top that, Andrew had also begun to buy real estate for his wife Abby's family, and the girls felt that he should take care of them as well. Since Andrew had not executed a Will, it may be that they were concerned they would never see their father's money. They knew that their inheritance would be the only chance they would have, since marriage didn't seem to be an option, to build the type of life they had always wanted.

The relationship between the girls and Abby Borden was a matter of controversy at the trial in 1893, but the record may never be set straight due to the conflicting accounts. Some, including Bridget Sullivan, the live-in maid for more than two years, testified that the relationship was cordial and betrayed no difficulties. Yet, it is true that Lizzie insisted on calling her stepmother "Mrs. Borden", and that she proclaimed quite ebulliently to the police when they had discovered Abby's dead body that the woman was her STEP-mother, not her mother. When asked at the inquest if the relations between Mrs. Borden and herself were cordial, Lizzie replied, "It depends on one's idea of cordiality, I suppose," a more-than-chilling answer.

At the very least, the relationship must have been subject to the common problems surrounding a daughter and her stepmother. However, Andrew chose to consummate a real estate deal that undoubtedly touched upon the larger issue of inheritance for Emma and Lizzie, and this may have proved intense enough to create hatred towards their stepmother. Abby's half-sister lived around the corner on Fourth Street, and Andrew, in an act that troubled the girls, bought half the house for his wife. The girls, insisting that their father should also take care of his own, bought from him, for the sum of one dollar, the house on Ferry Street where they had been raised. Right before the murders, Andrew bought the property back from them for $5,000, suggesting that the sisters' interest in the house was far from sentimental.

In the summer of 1890, Lizzie, who had just turned thirty years-old, took a bold step, embarking on a European tour with some other Fall River women. The group spent three months travelling about the capitals of the Continent, in what was then known as "The Grand Tour". How this mill town girl's mind must have expanded, seeing all the art work and architecture of grand civilizations, many of whose ideals dwarfed and outshone the money-oriented mien of Fall River. What radical changes in Lizzie's perceptions must have occurred; she may have been wondering if life could consist of more than ironing handkerchiefs and keeping busy with church socials. Fall River was culturally and spiritually a far cry from Europe, and returning home may have been a psychologically-devastating blow to her.

It was soon after this return that a few curious events occurred, the first being a daytime burglary of the Borden's house. Some jewelry, pocket money and street car tickets were stolen from the master bedroom. Andrew forbade the girls from talking about the burglary, but there is some evidence to suggest that he may have suspected Lizzie herself of having from committed the crime. She was known to shoplift, often to Andrew's embarrassment, and Lizzie's story of having discovered a nail wedged into the cellar door didn't really ring true. In the year after the burglary, Andrew began to lock his bedroom door when he was downstairs or out of the house; but he also started the curious habit of placing the key in plain sight on the sitting room mantle. It was almost as if he meant to say to Lizzie, "I know what you did."

This burglary may have also post-dated an incident in which Andrew cleared his barn of pigeons by either chopping off their heads with a hatchet, or by twisting the heads off with his bare hands. This brutal act must have had a negative effect on Lizzie, who witnessed the mutilated bodies brought into the house. If the burglary was, in fact, performed by her, it may have been in revenge for the murder of the pigeons. Either way, this act of brutality, which would have been a normal and routine procedure for a provincially-raised man of practicality like Andrew, would have severely distressed Lizzie. How much so may be reflected in the fact that later in her life, Lizzie became a passionate advocate for animal rescue leagues.

In the days leading up to the murders, members of the Borden family began to experience unpleasant symptoms of poisoning. On the morning of August 3rd, Abby Borden crossed the street to talk to Dr. Bowen, their family physician, to confess that she suspected their baker's bread to have been tampered with. Andrew, who also felt unwell, refused to allow the Doctor to treat his family, perhaps acting out of a reluctance to pay a bill for medical services when he could easily self-administer a home remedy, or he may simply have preferred to keep trouble within his family a very private business. Doctor Bowen made attempts to follow up with the Bordens later that afternoon, but was turned away.

Sometime that afternoon, Eli Bence, a clerk at a pharmacy on South Main Street, received a visit from a woman who wanted to purchase ten cents' worth of prussic acid. This acid was a highly-dangerous substance that required a physician's prescription. The woman claimed that she needed the acid to clean a seal-skin cape, something that didn't ring true to Bence who held his ground and refused to sell the woman what she sought. Although she left in a huff, Bence was later able to identify Lizzie Borden as the woman who had been in his shop. This was unquestionably a piece of evidence that would have been quite destructive to Lizzie's defense, had it been allowed into evidence at the trial. Curiously enough, it was excluded because the incident did not occur on the day of the murders, and was considered to be too remote in time to have any connection with them (a ruling that is quite shocking to a modern sensibility).

The same afternoon as the incident at the pharmacy, John V. Morse arrived in town, carrying no luggage, just the suit on his back, and stopped by to see Andrew. Much has been made of the fact that Morse showed up unexpectedly, and considering that the murders occurred the following morning, his arrival, for many, is quite suspect. However, Andrew had in late July requested that John come to see him to settle some routine business matters relating to the family farm. At the inquest, Morse even produced Andrew's letter, summoning him to Fall River, handing it to District Attorney Knowlton while under oath. The letter is not extant, but would be a crucial piece of evidence to exonerate John Morse from any suspicious behavior related to his visit.

Morse found the Bordens cordial and friendly, but feeling unwell. After some dinner (the equivalent to our present-day lunch), he traveled by buggy to the Swansea farm owned by the Bordens. He then went to have supper (the equivalent to our dinner) with a relative, returning to Fall River in the evening. He sat with Andew and Abby in the growing darkness of the sitting room, chatting about this and that. During this time Lizzie Borden, who had not yet seen her Uncle John, was out paying a very curious visit to her friend Alice Russell.

Lizzie arrived at Russell's house around seven o'clock that evening, and stayed for nearly two hours. She was disturbed about many things, and confessed to Russell that she felt that someone was determined to hurt her family. She had cut short her planned fishing trip to Marion due to a heavy feeling of foreboding and desperation of spirits. There had been some unexplained disturbances: she felt that the baker's bread or the milk was being poisoned; that someone was stalking them and watching the house, that her father had earned too many enemies, and that someone was angry with him over a real estate transaction; she noted that the daytime burglary had also been followed by several attempts to break into the barn. Russell, quite optimistically considering how valid many of Lizzie's fears ultimately turned out to be, assured her friend that all was well and opined that it was highly unlikely someone was trying to poison them. Lizzie went home, so rattled that when she entered the house she ran straight for her room; she did not even step into the sitting room to see her uncle who was sitting just a few yards away from the front door. After Lizzie had sequestered herself in her bedroom, Andrew and John finished their chat and went to bed. This left, as the final human actor in the house that night, only Bridget Sullivan, who was out visiting a friend; she came home shortly after ten o'clock, turned off all the lamps and locked up the doors before ascending to her third-floor room.

Then the house at 92 Second Street was dark and quiet and fully asleep.