In the sweltering summer of 1892, the quiet town of Fall River, Massachusetts, was shattered by a gruesome double murder that would etch itself into the annals of American criminal history. In the eerie shadow of the Borden household, whispers of betrayal and blood echoed through the streets, as the chilling nursery rhyme began to circulate: “Lizzie Borden took an ax, / And gave her mother 40 whacks; / When she saw what she had done, / She gave her father 41.”1
This haunting verse served as a grim prelude to the sensational trial of Lizzie Borden, a young woman accused of brutally slaughtering her father and stepmother in their own home. As the trial unfolded, it captivated a nation, revealing not only the macabre details of the crime but also the complex dynamics of family, class, and gender in late 19th-century America.
Key Players
An illustration of Andrew Borden published in Frank Leslie’s Weekly in 1893.
The Borden mystery unfolds against the backdrop of 1892 Massachusetts, where the stark contrasts of wealth and social ambition played out in a modest home on the edge of Fall River. At the center of it all was Andrew Borden, a prominent yet frugal businessman who amassed a significant fortune as a carpenter, undertaker, and later the President of the Union Savings Bank and director of multiple textile mills. He also invested heavily in commercial properties and real estate development.2
Despite his wealth, Andrew chose to live in a home with little more than basic amenities, devoid of indoor plumbing or gas lighting, just a stone’s throw from the bustling heart of town. This seemingly paradoxical lifestyle mirrored his character—hardworking yet notoriously stingy —and he was known for his black, double-breasted Prince Albert coat and string tie; he spent long hours managing his businesses, often to the detriment of familial relationships.
Abby Durfee Gray
Bettmann/Getty Images
Abby Durfee Gray, once viewed as an old maid at 37, was Andrew’s second wife. Abby sought to elevate her social status by marrying Andrew. However, many in the community still saw her as the daughter of a pushcart peddler, which cast doubt on her acceptance into Fall River’s elite circles. The union, compounded by Andrew’s wealth, was often scrutinized, with speculation that Andrew sought not just a wife, but a housekeeper to manage his household and raise his daughters.
The dynamics between Abby and Borden girls remain enigmatic; while no concrete evidence of abuse exists, testimonies during the murder trial suggest their relationship was strained.
Emma Borden
Andrew’s two daughters, Emma and Lizzie, navigated the complexities of their father’s austere world in different ways. Emma, the elder sister, was a steady presence in the local church community, often stepping into a maternal role after the untimely death of their mother, Sarah Morse.
Unlike her sister, Emma appeared content with her life, embracing its challenges without visible discontent. Yet, the shadows of her existence remain largely obscured; scant records detail her education or romantic life, leaving her character a mystery shrouded in silence.
Lizzie Borden
Lizzie Borden was acutely aware of her social standing and navigated it with poise. As a typical high-society debutante, she was deeply involved in various clubs and an active member of her church, often taking on leadership roles such as treasurer or secretary, with support from her father’s wealth.
Despite her prominent position, Lizzie remained unmarried, a situation that sparked various theories. For one, she was not considered a great beauty; some critics, perhaps unfairly, described her as homely. Additionally, her strained relationship with her father fueled her resentment, as she felt deprived of the advantages that came with their wealth. Lizzie craved financial independence and power, but her father steadfastly denied her that opportunity.
Moreover, her social standing created an awkward predicament in the marriage market. Her father deemed suitable suitors unacceptable, viewing those interested in Lizzie as unworthy and often dismissing them as fortune hunters. This confluence of factors left Lizzie in a precarious position, both socially and personally.
Bridget Sullivan
Bridget Sullivan’s early life remains somewhat of a mystery, but she was born around 1866 in County Cork, Ireland. In 1883, she made the significant decision to emigrate to the United States. At first, she took several low-wage domestic positions along the East Coast. It wasn’t until November 1889 that she secured a role with the Borden family
4 August 1892
On the fateful morning of 4 August 1892, what began as an ordinary day in Fall River, Massachusetts, quickly descended into unimaginable horror. For the sake of the blog, let’s quickly go over the key moments of the day:
7:00 a.m. – 9:30 a.m.: Abby, Andrew, and Uncle John Morse have breakfast together. Afterward, Morse and Andrew retire to the sitting room while Abby begins her household chores. Bridget Sullivan steps outside to the backyard to be sick, adding an unfortunate subplot to an otherwise ordinary morning.
Morse leaves at approximately 8:45 a.m. Libby has a light breakfast around 9:00, and a few minutes later, Andrew departs with several letters Lizzie has asked him to mail. Abby goes upstairs to continue cleaning the second floor, while Bridget spends the next hour washing windows outdoors—an impressively mundane task given what follows.
Abby Borden is believed to have been slaughtered in the upstairs guest bedroom, suffering multiple blows from a hatchet
10:45 a.m. – 11:15 a.m.: Andrew Borden returns home with a small parcel in hand, where Bridget Sullivan lets him in—just as a muted laugh drifts down from upstairs. Lizzie briefly visits her father in the dining room and tells him Abby has received a message, then steps out, leaving Andrew to settle on the sitting-room sofa for a nap. Bridget then retires to her attic room, apparently trusting the household to remain uneventful for at least five minutes.
Shortly afterward, Andrew is butchered on the sofa, suffering 10-11 blows to the face.
Lizzie calls for Bridget, announcing that someone has killed her father. She later tells neighbor Adelaide Churchill that, at the time of the murder, she had been in the barn searching for “irons”—sinkers for an upcoming fishing trip.
11:30 a.m.: Dozens of policemen stream in and out of the Borden home while doctors conduct post-mortem examinations on the bodies laid out on the dining-room table. Deputy Marshal Fleet questions Lizzie, who responds with striking detachment. When he calls Abby her mother, Lizzie corrects him coolly: “She is not my mother—she is my stepmother.”
Judged by Public Opinion
When news spread that Lizzie was under suspicion, many newspaper readers were appalled—not primarily by the possibility that she had murdered her parents, but by the police’s willingness to suspect her. The Boston Globe captured that outrage:
The only person that the government can catch is one whose very innocence placed her in its power; the poor, defenseless child, who ought to have claimed by very helplessness their protection.
Angry letters condemning the police poured into newspaper offices from New York to Chicago. Editorials attacked the “brutish” officers for suspecting a grieving daughter of such a crime. To many Americans, a properly raised young woman could not possibly have murdered her parents with a hatchet on a bright summer morning. Their reaction, however, was not entirely irrational.
Throughout the 1890s, nearly every issue of Forum, Arena, Scribner’s, North American Review, Popular Science Monthly, and Harper’s—one of Lizzie’s favorite magazines—published articles portraying the well-bred American woman as gentle, physically frail, and docile. Many were written in response to the growing women’s-rights movement and sought to demonstrate that women were supposedly incapable of exercising men’s “sacred privileges.
After reading such arguments by “learned gentlemen” and antifeminist women, Americans of all views on women’s rights felt certain by the summer of 1892 that Lizzie Borden could not have hacked her parents to death. Her presumed physical and psychological frailty made the crime seem impossible.
Questionable Innocence
Five days after the murders, authorities convened an inquest. Lizzie testified on all three days, making it the only occasion on which she gave sworn testimony in court.3
More damaging than the police’s growing collection of inconsistencies, however, was Lizzie’s own testimony, which led her into a briar patch of apparent self-incrimination. She had no defense attorney during the closed proceedings, though she was not entirely without support. The family doctor, a firm believer in her innocence, testified that he had prescribed her a double dose of morphine after the murders to help her sleep. He suggested that the drug’s side effects might explain her confusion—an explanation that, unsurprisingly, did not simplify matters.
Unable to establish a consistent account of Lizzie’s movements, the judge, district attorney, and police marshal concluded that she was “probably guilty.”
Authorities arrested Lizzie on 11 August 1892—one week after the murders—and held her in the former sheriff’s residence beside the Ash Street Jail for the next ten months, pending trial. She spent the trial’s twelve days in the jail’s matrons’ quarters—a modest change of scenery, though hardly a vacation.
Local members of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), an organization in which Lizzie was active, visited frequently, bringing her books, flowers, and better food—essentially the nineteenth-century equivalent of a very determined care package.
The Trial
Lizzie Borden’s trial opened on 5 June 1893, at the New Bedford Courthouse before a panel of three judges. Her formidable defense team included Andrew Jennings and George Robinson, a former governor of Massachusetts, while District Attorney Knowlton and Thomas Moody represented the prosecution.
Before an all-male jury of twelve, Moody delivered the state’s opening argument.4 In a theatrical—and rather ill-advised—moment, he tossed Lizzie’s blue dress onto the prosecution table, revealing Andrew and Abby Borden’s skulls. According to one newspaper account, the sight caused Lizzie to faint for several minutes, sending “a thrill of excitement” through the spectators and leaving the attorneys visibly uncomfortable.
For most of Moody’s two-hour address, Lizzie watched from behind a fan as he portrayed her as the only person with both the motive and opportunity to commit the murders. He then produced the head of an axe from a bag, claiming it was the weapon she had used.
The first several prosecution witnesses described events at and around the Borden home on the morning of 4 August 1892. The most significant was twenty-six-year-old Bridget Sullivan, who testified that Lizzie was the only person she saw inside the house when Andrew and Abby were murdered.
Sullivan offered the defense a small measure of comfort, however, stating that during her more than two years with the family, she had never witnessed signs of the supposedly bitter relationship between Lizzie and her stepmother.
Emma Borden, Lizzie’s older sister, was the defense’s most anticipated witness. She testified that Lizzie and their father had enjoyed a good relationship and explained that Lizzie had given him the gold ring found on Andrew Borden’s little finger ten or fifteen years earlier—an especially valued gift.
Emma also insisted that Lizzie and Abby had maintained cordial relations. At the same time, she acknowledged harboring resentment over Andrew’s transfer of a Fall River property—“grandfather’s house,” as Emma called it—to Abby and Abby’s sister. The testimony offered the jury a family portrait that was outwardly polite, if not entirely free of old grievances.
She’s Just a Girl
Popular theories about women’s physiology and psychology took on new significance for followers of the Borden case. Anatomists argued that women differed little from their prehistoric ancestors and had experienced arrested evolution because reproductive demands diverted vital energy that men used to develop their physiques and intellects.
Women were said to have sloping shoulders, broad hips, underdeveloped muscles, short limbs, and poor coordination—traits that seemed to support the belief that Lizzie could not have wielded an axe with enough force to fracture bone nearly two dozen times.
Psychologists similarly described women as spiritually sensitive, attentive to detail, and capable of “ennobling love,” yet also illogical, inconsistent, and dependent on others’ judgment. Their supposed resemblance to children reinforced this view; as one Scribner’s psychologist put it, “Women are merely large babies.”
Women were considered superior to men only in morality, possessing greater “natural refinement,” “diviner instincts,” and “spiritual sensibility.” Their presumed gentleness, hatred of cruelty, and truthfulness appeared fundamentally incompatible with the character of an axe murderer.
Where’s the Evidence?
The defense built much of its case around the prosecution’s own witnesses. “There has never been a trial so full of surprises,” one reporter observed, citing the “marvelous contradictions” offered by witnesses supposedly testifying for a common purpose.
Defense attorneys repeatedly emphasized inconsistencies in key prosecution witnesses’ testimony. They also pointed to gaps in the state’s physical evidence. Where, they asked, was the axe handle that had supposedly broken away from the head presented in court as part of the murder weapon? The prosecution had no satisfactory answer.
George Robinson further exploited the state’s timeline, which allowed only eight to thirteen minutes between Andrew Borden’s murder and Lizzie’s call to Bridget Sullivan. Within that narrow interval, he argued, the killer would have had to wash blood from her body, clothing, and weapon—and then conceal the weapon as well. It was a demanding schedule, even for a prosecution theory determined to keep everything moving.
The trial’s decisive moment may have come when the three-judge panel ruled that the prosecution could not introduce Lizzie Borden’s inquest testimony, despite its contradictions and implausible explanations.
The judges determined that, by the time of the coroner’s inquest, Lizzie was effectively a prisoner charged with two murders. Because she testified without an attorney present, they concluded that her statements were not voluntary. The judges held that she should have been warned that the Fifth Amendment gave her the right to remain silent.
The court rejected the prosecution’s argument that Lizzie had been merely a suspect rather than a prisoner. It also dismissed the state’s claim that her testimony should be admitted because it amounted to a denial rather than a confession.
Not Guilty
The jury retired after what one reporter called Judge Dewey’s “plea for the innocent,” reportedly astonishing the other judges with its lack of objectivity. Although Dewey owed his judgeship to Robinson, his faith in Lizzie’s innocence may also have reflected his three daughters, the eldest of whom was Lizzie’s age.
The jurors—respectable family men—may have recognized the threat posed by convicting a woman they considered gentle and respectable. If Lizzie could become an heiress by murdering her parents, what might they think of their own daughters?
After only an hour, Lizzie rose, her face “livid” and her lips compressed, as the foreman announced, “Not guilty!” She collapsed back into her seat while spectators cheered, waved hats and handkerchiefs, climbed onto benches, and wept.
Although the circumstantial evidence made conviction difficult, the jurors reportedly never debated the case. They reached an immediate, unanimous verdict, then spent an hour chatting merely to avoid appearing to have decided in advance.
Life After the Trial
The next morning, Americans celebrated in newspaper headlines what they saw as the jury’s wisdom. Lizzie and Emma returned to Second Street, but Fall River society soon withdrew its support, leaving Lizzie largely isolated.
Determined to recover the youth she felt she had missed, Lizzie bought a large house on the hill, named it Maplecroft, requested the more fashionable name Lisbeth, and stopped attending the church that had defended her. Her standing in Fall River suffered further when residents discovered she had bought and destroyed every available copy of Edwin Porter’s The Fall River Tragedy, including those containing portions of her inquest testimony—a practical, if conspicuous, way to manage the historical record.
In 1904, Lizzie befriended Boston actress Nance O’Neil. The following year, she hosted a lavish party for O’Neil and her troupe, horrifying her neighbors. That night, Emma moved out and never saw or spoke to Lizzie again. Lizzie died in Fall River on 1 June 1927, aged sixty-six; Emma died ten days later in New Hampshire.
Final Thoughts
Although Andrew and Abby Borden’s murders remain officially unsolved, the trial and its aftermath proved almost as captivating as the crime itself. Fall River’s cultural, religious, class, ethnic, and gender divisions turned the case into a national spectacle—because apparently one double murder was not enough without a full social analysis.
The truth remains buried on Second Street with Andrew, Abby, Emma, and Lizzie. But in the summer of 1893, many Americans were certain that no respectable young woman like Lizzie could possibly have murdered her parents with an axe. Reputable authors in respectable magazines assured them this comforting conclusion was correct. They preferred not to consider the alternative, which was probably the point.
Why does the Lizzie Borden case still make money? Because society has learned to package murder, murderers, and the horrific as entertainment. We enjoy playing armchair detectives, debating social injustices, and pointing fingers—preferably at people who are safely dead. Looking backward is easier than examining our current social environment or dealing with its problems. Blood and gore sell. Truth, less so.
Until next time, Keep Reading and Stay Caffeinated.
For those hungry to explore more, click below to find additional reading:
The Trial of Lizzie Borden by Cara Robertson. An essential piece of American mythology, the popular fascination with the Borden murders has endured for more than one hundred years. Told and retold in every conceivable genre, the murders have secured a place in the American pantheon of mythic horror. Based on transcripts of the Borden legal proceedings, contemporary newspaper accounts, unpublished local accounts, and recently unearthed letters from Lizzie herself, The Trial of Lizzie Borden is “a fast-paced, page-turning read” (Booklist, starred review) that offers a window into Gilded Age.
The Borden Murders: Lizzie Borden and the Trial of the Century by Sarah Miller. In a compelling, linear narrative, Miller takes readers along as she investigates a brutal crime: the 4 August 1892, murders of wealthy and prominent Andrew and Abby Borden. The accused? Mild-mannered and highly respected, Lizzie Borden is the daughter of Andrew and the stepdaughter of Abby. Most of what is known about Lizzie’s arrest and subsequent trial (and acquittal) comes from sensationalized newspaper reports; as Miller sorts fact from fiction and a legal battle gets underway, a gripping portrait of a woman and a town emerges.
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Footnotes
- Some of the earliest recorded print variations, including an item from an Ohio newspaper dated early 1894, featured “20 whacks” and “21 whacks” instead of “40” and “41.” The definitive “40 whacks” version did not appear in prominent bound collections or major newspapers until decades later, notably in Edmund Pearson’s 1924 true crime book Studies in Murder. ↩︎
- Over time, Andrew Borden expanded beyond carpentry and undertaking into real estate development, commercial property ownership, and banking. He served as President of Union Savings Bank and held directorships at several prominent financial institutions and textile manufacturers, including First National Bank, Durfee Safe Deposit & Trust Company, Troy Cotton and Woolen Manufactory, and Globe Yarn Mill. Bartle, Ronald (2017). Lizzie Borden and the Massachusetts Axe Murders. Sherfield-on-Loddon, Hampshire: Waterside Press. ISBN 978-1-909-97643-6. ↩︎
- This document contains Lizzie Andrew Borden’s testimony at the inquest into the deaths of Andrew J. and Abby Borden, held from August 9–11, 1892. Because Volume I of the inquest proceedings is lost, her testimony is reproduced here as an exact transcription from The Evening Standard of New Bedford, Massachusetts, dated 12 June 1893—Monday evening edition, page 8, plus two unnumbered supplement pages. LizziesInquest.pdf ↩︎
- Of the twelve, the foreman was a real estate broker and sometime politician; two were manufacturers, three were mechanics, and six were farmers. ↩︎
Resources:
Why We’re So Obsessed With Lizzie Borden’s 40 Whacks. JSTOR Daily. Accessed on 1 September 2026.
Inquest Testimony of Lizzie Borden. Famous Trials- Accounts and Materials for 100 of History’s Most Important Trials. Accessed 3 September 2026.
Lizzie Borden. Lizzie Borden | History | Research Starters | EBSCOhost. Accessed 10 September 2026.
Lizzie Andrew Borden, Virtual Museum & Library. lizzieandrewborden.com. Accessed 10 September 2026.
The Conduct of the Law- The Borden Case. Davis_LegalOpinion. Accessed 13 September 2026.
The Lizzie Borden Collection at the Fall River Historical Society. Fall River Historical Society. Accessed 16 September 2026.
How Lizzie Borden Got Away With Murder. Smithsonian Magazine. Accessed 16 September 2026.