The Lizzie Borden Case

Question 1

•Andrew Borden

Answer 1

• Part of the Borden family (one of the 7 families who controlled Fall River economically)
• Descendants of settlers who arrived in 1638
• 126 Bordens, but not all equally wealthy
• unlike some relatives, had no inherited money
• Andrew made money making furniture, then coffins, then moves into banking
• In 1892, 70 year old Bank President
• Worth $500,000 (about $12 million today)
• But he is also cheap and tight fisted

Question 2

Abby Borden

Answer 2

• Andrews 2nd wife 
o 64 years old 
o married Andrew when Lizzie was 2 years old after andrew’s first wife died
o Emma and Lizzie don’t like her
o Refuse to call her “mother”

Question 3

Lizabeth Andrew “Lizzie” Borden

Answer 3

• 5’4”
• unmarried
• a bit eccentric
• But known as a good Christian woman

Question 4

Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU)

Answer 4

• “moderation on all things healthful: total abstinence from all things harmful.”
• social reform issues , including prostitution, public health, sanitation
• “Home Protection Ballot”

Question 5

Kleptomania

Answer 5

• Epidemic of middle class women shoplifters during this period
• Responding to feelings of deprivation
• Real or imaginary injustices, lack of prenatal love or support
• Rebellion against constricted roles

Question 6

Prussic Acid

Answer 6

• August 3, 1892
  
  • Lizzie goes to local pharmacy to try to buy Prussic Acid from pharmacist Eli Bence
  • Speaks in quivering voice
  • Doesn’t get it

Question 7

Alice Russell

Answer 7

Friend of Lizzie
~Lizzie told here there are creepy people hanging around the house
~Lizzie thought someone is trying to poison her family

Question 8

Bridget “Maggie” Sullivan

Answer 8

Borden’s live in maid

Question 9

Manners in the Gilded Age

Answer 9

• Upper-class and upper middle class there was an obsession with manners
• It was the way they were able to mingle and date within the high class society
   o It showed who could be trusted or not

Question 10

Cult of Domesticity

Answer 10

o Women’s job to smooth out the rough rigid men

Question 11

Social Darwinism

Answer 11

o Phrenology- shapes of the head mean different things

Question 12

Andrew Jennings

Answer 12

Borden Family Attorney
• Hires a Pinkerton Detective named O.M Hascom to find out who did it
• Lizzie suggests unfairly grilled at inquest without an attorney when she was on morphine
• Lizzie being railroaded by overeager Fall River officials
• Calls Borden “this poor Christian girl
• Crowd cheers for the defense

Question 13

Hosea Knowlton

Answer 13

District Attorney
• Summons Lizzie to testify in inquest into deaths (August 9)
• Veteran Prosecutor
• Ends inquest certain of Borden’s guilt
• Says lizzie had motive means and opportunity
• Has lizzie arrested that night

Question 14

Judge Josiah Blaisdell

Answer 14

• Presiding judge says no lawyers during questioning

o Miranda is 70 years later doesn’t apply

Question 15

William Moody

Answer 15

• Opens with chilling discussion of bitterness in Borden home
o She is not my mother my mother is dead
• Girls have bitterness against their father
• Prussic acid
• Alice Russell
• No stranger could have come and gone undetected

Question 16

Justice Justin Dewey

Answer 16

• Gives the jury instructions
• May raise a reasonable doubt regardless of their place or standing in society
• Could she stay clam all morning after killing her mother first then wait a few hours for daddy
• Don’t be blinded to the testimony of the “experts”
• Total half hour of jury instructions many of which favor the defense