Just in time for All Hallows Eve!
Lizbeth Borden, ULB Pioneer
I was watching a ghost hunting show the other day and they were in the Borden house (now a B&B – fun vacation!), trying to solve the murders and prove the place was haunted. The psychic came up with an interesting theory and I thought I’d investigate it myself.
We all know this rhyme, right?
“Lizzie Borden took an
axe
Gave her mother 40
whacks
When she saw what she
had done
Gave her father 41”
I am always intrigued by stories that seem to have an
undercurrent – I feel that if you follow the goddamned facts, you will get to
the truth even if you cannot prove it in a court of law. There are no giant leaps of logic. What did Sherlock Holmes say? “when you have eliminated the impossible,
whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth”. My theory is more like, when you follow the
facts and you remember to employ common sense, you will come closer to the
truth than anyone else. In this case, I wondered what would drive a woman to violently hack, dozens of times, at the heads of her parents? It's an interesting story, even if my synopsis is a bit long...
(please remember this is ME, I use internet info and much
like my Jesus exposés, I began this with absolutely zero knowledge of the crime
other than that poem at the top and a ghost story on tv. I researched the story to my own
satisfaction. You want more info? Go look for yourself! It’s a big world, baby.)
Lizzie Andrew Borden
was born in 1860. (she renamed herself ‘Lizbeth’
after the murders, and I am going to respect her choice from here on out in
this telling). Her mother, Sarah, died
about 2.5 years later. Her sister Emma
was 9 years older, effectively making her a ‘little mother’ of the baby since
the father was working all day, every day.
He routinely worked 14-hour days.
Please notice that Lizbeth’s middle GIVEN
name was Andrew. That is just creepy.
Andrew Jackson Borden, the father, was a wealthy citizen of Fall River, MA. Andy
had no fortune from his own parents – he grew up very poor. He was a ‘self-made man’ and probably fucking
pissed off at the world about that. He
had made his fortune in manufacturing (furniture and caskets) and then in
textile mills. He also owned a lot of
commercial properties and was president of two banks. He had made his gigantic fortune through a cunning
combination of ruthless financial practices and maniacal thrift. At the time of the murders he was retired and had
assets estimated to be worth at least five hundred thousand dollars. Remember this was in 1892 - I think that is close to 10 MILLION DOLLARS by today's standards. Dude was rich, is
what I’m saying. RICH. And normally, rich people in that town lived
on ‘The Hill’ – which would make sense because a mill town would smell
absolutely wretched. You would want to
be on a hill, with the possibility of a breeze, away from the center of all
that crap, and honestly, away from the lower-class and homeless (and again, a
mill smells worse than 10 dead bodies) that would no doubt plague the city
center. But Andrew kept his smaller home
which was near the mill – because he was ‘frugal’. This smaller home was not a hovel, but it was
not great.
Borden House. Two chimneys for the whole place. brrr.
‘Frugal’ in old Andy’s case means he kept his family in
absolute tight-fisted miserable poverty. In their
house they used what were politely called ‘excrement buckets’. There was no indoor plumbing, so not only the
poop factor but also bathing, washing dishes, water for food, washing clothes. There was also no electricity. That would be exactly the same as today, when
your neighbors and friends have bathrooms and light switches and YOU are still
dumping your shit buckets in the back yard.
Makes growing up in elementary school and high school sorta torturous,
no? Plus the added fun of full skirts and
corsets. High necks and long
sleeves. Basically, you have to do all
of this heavy manual labor while you are dressed in bindings – these girls had
the social restrictions of their class and yet none of its benefits. AND, this was during the last years of industrial
revolution (1760-~1830) and these “miracles of science” were very standard,
especially in a prosperous mill town like Fall River. But not for old Andy. It would cost money to upgrade the house, and
to HELL with his daughters he wasn’t going to spend it. But I’ll just betcha he demanded his 3-piece
suits were clean every day (he wore a black suit every day, winter and
summer). I’m sure he demanded dinner on
the table at a certain time and a bath when he wanted it. This is the same thing as a hoarder – the
other side of the same coin. It’s all
about power and control, and the misery of anyone they control is what gives
these people satisfaction. It’s
narcissism, plain and simple. Also – he
was a ruthless businessman. OF
COURSE. He was a complete bastard and
the people of the town pretty much hated him.
It wasn’t like he gave money to charity or loans to needy hard working
families, or gave raises to the worker-bees or anything. And imagine what the conditions were like for
employees working in a factory in that time.
Yeah.
This may not sound so bad from the outside. Anyone who hasn’t lived with a narc cannot
know the fear, anxiety, and stress that comes with living like that. Being frugal didn’t mean he wanted to clip
coupons or cut corners. NO - they were
eating week-old lamb stew (no refrigeration, remember?) and this was Massachusetts. Bitter horrible cold in the winter with no
heat (who needs coal or blankets and warm coats? Not a frugal person!) and summers plagued
with humidity and bugs and unrelenting heat.
No electricity means no fans, no ice.
This wasn’t being poor – this was intentional abuse from someone who had
all the power to make things better. But
he relished the power and control he had, and the misery he created.
The property had originally been constructed to hold two
families, with separate entrances. To
get from the upstairs master bedroom to say, Emma’s bedroom, one would have
to go downstairs, through a hall, and then back upstairs. Very private.
While there is no reliable evidence suggesting that Andy was molesting
his daughters (but plenty of supposition and theories), I think the murders
themselves speak to some pretty grave abuses.
Sarah and Emma. boy howdy they look happy.
Again, Emma was 9 when Lizbeth was born, and their mother
died a little over 2 years later. So
Emma was almost 12 years old by that time.
According to all reports, as an adult and even after the murders she was
a quiet person, given to take life as it came.
She had been trained for 11 years to take the abuse (in whatever form)
from her father. Her mother, certainly,
had to simply accept his narcissistic rages, and modeled this behavior to her
daughter. Emma, as a little girl, would
be especially vulnerable to a bully like Andy.
Once Lizbeth was born, and Emma became her caretaker, we can imagine
the HUGE problems that would have gone on.
Baby crying? Who does Andy hit
and yell at? This is reminding me of
Sonny Liston. And if our friend LOGIC is by our side, this Borden story is almost as
horrible. Even without the sexual abuse
angle, but I’m not going to count that out.
The mother died of what they called ‘Uterine Congestion’ with back
problems - which sounds fake, but here is a link http://www.pelvicpain.org/news/pdfs/vol4_no2.pdf
which is a pretty thorough
explanation. Here is a quote from that
link: {...number of women
describing] post coital ache (65%). Majority of women give a history of
emotional disturbance originating in their childhood. ßso it hurt her to have
sex with Andy and she was probably molested as a child. See how this is making more and more
sense? He married her because she was
the perfect treat for a narc, needy and mentally unhealthy and easily
tormented. He was probably molesting
Emma, since his wife would scream in pain from sex, and she had gone to doctors so
it was known around town that she had ‘female problems’. And a man needs relief, right? Couldn’t go to a whore because of his social
standing. After his wife died, Andy
turned down any offers of help from other family members, including his sister.
He instead opted to keep his household his own private domain, thereby establishing
the kind of family isolation well documented by incest survivors. He kept it all in the family.
After Sarah died, Andy (I’m sure the name 'Andy' pisses him off, it makes me
giggle) was remarried to a woman (already an old maid at 35 so she was ‘on the
shelf’ as they say, and he knew she would be compliant and grateful) in 1865 who
was the daughter of a push-cart peddler.
She wanted status, and marrying into this family gave her that. Andy wanted a housekeeper. Turns out she wasn’t so compliant and
grateful. The Borden sisters eventually
refused to call her ‘mother’ and finally refused to even speak to her. She was (by accounts) power hungry and money
hungry and either she was Andy’s right-hand man or his enabler – or both. Hey! A
flying monkey enters the story! Emma was 14 and Llizbeth was
5 when her stepmother came to live with them.
They had been kept in this level of poverty and abuse and isolation and despair for all that time,
and another woman steps in and takes over the house. Emma had probably been running the house for
years due to her mother’s illness – this is a bad situation. Emma had most likely probably been sexually
abused by the father for years, which would make her weirdly feeling like HIS WIFE, and
then he marries someone else, and hello mind-fuck. Did I mention they hated their step-mother? Here is a quote
about Lizbeth:
When [she was] a young girl, she
accompanied her parents to Chicago and was there a member of the Sunday school
class and punctual in attendance. She was, however, a girl with anything
but an enthusiastic idea of her own personal attainments. She thought people were not
favorably disposed toward her and that she made a poor impression. This
conduced to the acceptance of this very opinion among church people, and
consequently the young woman was to some extent avoided by the young women of
the church. She had horrible self-esteem issues and had no
reason to believe that people would like her, so they didn’t. Sounds VERY familiar to me, achingly
familiar.
Andy never (ever) allowed his daughters to date or socialize
outside of school or church. They
weren’t allowed the funds for nicer clothes, or to go to parties. So, here they were because of social
constraints, not allowed to work and earn their own money, and their father
kept them from having any normal way out – normal being marriage. He kept them all to himself. Ominous foreboding, right? Yeah, it gets worse. Emma stuck around the house, being the good girl,
but Lizbeth managed to join a couple of church groups (religious or not, if
that’s where you are allowed to socialize then damn if you aren’t converted). By all accounts Lizbeth was close to her
father. She gave him a ring on the occasion
of her high school graduation, that he was wearing on the day he died. Some say this isn’t consistent with the
theory of sexual abuse – but us ULBs know that is a false assumption. There can be a trauma bond created that
surpasses all logic of anyone outside the abuse ring. She was his special chosen girl – oh gag. She was still in the FOG and it was very
bad. These girls were isolated from
almost everything outside the house, certainly from any other male/sexual
influence. He had gone from Emma to Lizbeth. Emma was probably in a horrible place of being glad and guilty and horrified all at once. The step-mother never had any
children – at 35 she was almost but not too old to have children – possibly the
marriage wasn’t sexual in nature. Given
that he had Emma and Lizbeth for that. The brutality of her murder would indicate a personal vendetta against the step-mom. She (in my opinion) had been abusing and domineering the girls for years, and enabling Andy in HIS abuses.
Emma Borden, War Hero
In 1884 (Lizbeth was then 24, Emma was 33) their father
gave his wife’s half-sister a house.
GAVE A WOMAN HE DIDN’T REALLY KNOW A HOUSE. To say that his daughters objected would be
calling Hiroshima a small bang. It was
at this point they started calling their step-mother ‘Mrs. Borden’. Andy tried to make peace by giving his
daughters some money and allowing them to
rent out one of his other properties.
He – he threw a little money at them and then ALLOWED them to be landlords of a house he owned. How big of a nuclear bomb must
have gone off in that house for Andy to capitulate to ANYTHING. The girls must have completely gone bat-crap
crazy. They were always mild-mannered outside the house - there are NO stories of craziness or bad behavior about either one of them. The maid wasn't gonna talk.
This, of course, would not be the only story of financial
manipulation. There are MANY – with the
upshot in each case that the girls were deprived while others reaped the
benefits of knowing their father. Sound
familiar? Over, and over, and over –
shown how little they are worth, how his opinion and regard for strangers is
higher than of them. They are not good
enough, even though they give everything, every last thing, to this man.
In spring of 1892 – there was a pivotal incident. Lizbeth kept pigeons in a barn loft, I think
as pets? She was 32 years old. Possibly they also ate these pigeons, but she loved them – the girls were
obviously not allowed to have pets (frugal!).
At some point her father got angry and decided that the pigeons were attracting
neighborhood boys and he went out to the barn and massacred them all. Some reports say he did it with a hatchet HA
HA OH REALLY?! Talk about the straw that
broke the camel’s back. These birds were
something she doted on, poured her love into – I mean, she was not allowed
around any men. You want to have a
hatchet, motherfucker? I’ll give you a
hatchet. To the face. (also – the pigeons were attracting
boys? Can’t have THAT. Maybe she was caught with a guy and told her
father ‘he wanted to see the pigeons!’ and that would be all the excuse Andy
would need to kill those birds. Perhaps this was also her 'space' - a place she had carved out to get away from both of them. Can't have that either).
And so, 3 months later, the two Borden elders are very, very dead. The rhyme is wrong: Mrs. Borden received 19 blows to the head. I think the back of her head. She (Lizbeth) just wanted the bitch dead and gone. Andy received 11
blows, chopping his FACE up beyond all recognition. She hacked his fucking face off. Sounds like a crime of passion to me. And that passion would be RAGE, with a side
of HATE.
Andrew Borden. He has a bit of a headache. A SPLITTING headache, if you will.
HA HA bitch is dead with her ass in the air
Abby (left) and Andrew Borden - skulls. Yeeowch.
Emma was not home at the time. Lizbeth and the maid were the only ones
home. Mrs. Borden was the first one killed, in the upstairs bedroom. Then
approximately 90 minutes later Andy came home and fell asleep on a downstairs sofa, and his
face was hacked to pieces. How well planned was this coup that someone could wait an hour and a half for the second murder? No blood was
found at the crime scene (my limited knowledge of science via CSI episodes says this cannot be
the case unless the face/body was covered with something). An axe head was found and the handle had been broken off/pulled out and was thought to be found later, rubbed with dust and with no blood on it. Emma and the maid both testified and were
calm, saying that someone besides Lizbeth must have done it. The crime is written about in a gabillion
places, you can take a look at all of it.
My theory? It was done with a hatchet, not an axe. I've tried to lift an axe - they're fucking heavy. Plus the pigeon episode. Yeah, I think it was a hatchet. More lady-sized. Lizbeth and Emma and the maid were
in on it. The maid had seen the abuse - she was a live-in maid, did I mention, and was most likely abused, verbally and physically, if not sexually - it was an incredibly sick household.
Emma supposedly had left town, and I guess that was a good cover
story. Lizbeth took the heat for a
while (she was in prison until the trial concluded, and in 1892 that had to be pretty bad) because she would have been far better
able to withstand prison and the stress and ugliness (press) of a trial than Emma would have been.
Part of Lizbeth’s defense was that she was in the barn loft at the time
of the murders. The BARN LOFT, where the
pigeons were killed. Good one Lizbeth,
I see what you did there! A big LOL to
you, sister. *21st century fist bump*
She was aquitted. The
girls inherited whatever portion of the estate they were entitled to, which was most of it. The maid left town after the trial and went to live in Anaconda, Montana. Up to the day she died she maintained her story as testified at the trial. Lizbeth changed her name (from Lizzie, probably her father's pet name for her *shudder*) and started hanging
around theatre people - she joined the drama club, y'all! How much fun were these people? A LOT of fun, I would bet. No more sexual constraints, no more social
requirements, just FUN. By many accounts
she took a lesbian lover – well, more power to her, and while I don’t think you
can ‘turn’ anyone gay, I do think that she wasn’t likely to get involved with
any MEN in that lifetime, you know? She
bought a house on ‘The Hill” in the rich section and hired maids and probably
took hot baths and had iced lemonade every fucking day of her life. She and Emma were eventually estranged (the lesbian
thing was difficult for Emma) but they never hated each other.
On her death Lizbeth left a good portion of her estate to an animal shelter place. Still feeling guilty for the pigeons, probably, and for no good reason ANDY.
Listen up narcs. Ye
reap what ye sow, you fucking bastards.
If I was to re-write that poem:
Lizbeth Borden took an axe
Put it to the skulls of both those whacks
Who tortured her, & her sister too
If it was me I’d have done it too.
Well played, Lizbeth Borden. Rock on. RIP.
