Lizzie Borden And The Massachusetts Axe Murders

The case of Lizzie Bordon is one of the most infamous in criminal history having spawned songs, plays and a range of publications. It also ranks as one of the most puzzling. Having been acquitted of the axe murders of both her parents, Borden then simply returned home and carried on as before only to be roundly ostracised by the stoutly religious local community. Prosecutors never charged anyone else with the crimes leaving the case naggingly unsolved. Here, author Ronald Bartle revisits the events which occurred in Fall River, Massachussets in 1892. He explains how her answers to police questions were at times strange and contradictory and her accounts to them often bizarre. With so many pointers to her involvement the trial has been compared to that of O J Simpson in the modern day. It is immortalised in legal and other folklore as well as in the children’s rhyme: Lizzie Borden took an axe And gave her mother forty whacks. When she saw what she had done, She gave her father forty-one. A refreshing account of a very famous case. Contains legal and other analysis. A fly-on-the-wall view of the nineteenth century USA justice system. A true story that reads like a thriller.

With murder, court battles, and sensational newspaper headlines, the story of Lizzie Borden is compulsively readable and perfect for the Common Core. Lizzie Borden took an axe, gave her mother forty whacks. When she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one. In a compelling, linear narrative, Miller takes readers along as she investigates a brutal crime: the August 4, 1892, murders of wealthy and prominent Andrew and Abby Borden. The accused? Mild-mannered and highly respected Lizzie Borden, daughter of Andrew and 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 as a legal battle gets under way, a gripping portrait of a woman and a town emerges. With inserts featuring period photos and newspaper clippings—and, yes, images from the murder scene—readers will devour this nonfiction book that reads like fiction. A School Library Journal Best Best Book of the Year "Sure to be a hit with true crime fans everywhere." —School Library Journal, Starred

In Cara Robertson’s “enthralling new book,” The Trial of Lizzie Borden, “the reader is to serve as judge and jury” (The New York Times). Based on twenty years of research and recently unearthed evidence, this true crime and legal history is the “definitive account to date of one of America’s most notorious and enduring murder mysteries” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). When Andrew and Abby Borden were brutally hacked to death in Fall River, Massachusetts, in August 1892, the arrest of the couple’s younger daughter Lizzie turned the case into international news and her murder trial into a spectacle unparalleled in American history. Reporters flocked to the scene. Well-known columnists took up conspicuous seats in the courtroom. The defendant was relentlessly scrutinized for signs of guilt or innocence. Everyone—rich and poor, suffragists and social conservatives, legal scholars and laypeople—had an opinion about Lizzie Borden’s guilt or innocence. Was she a cold-blooded murderess or an unjustly persecuted lady? Did she or didn’t she? 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. In contrast, “Cara Robertson presents the story with the thoroughness one expects from an attorney…Fans of crime novels will love it” (Kirkus Reviews). 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 America in the Gilded Age. This “remarkable” (Bustle) book “should be at the top of your reading list” (PopSugar).

Most people could probably tell you that Lizzie Borden “took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks,” but few could say that, when tried, Lizzie Borden was acquitted, and fewer still, why. In Joseph A. Conforti’s engrossing retelling, the case of Lizzie Borden, sensational in itself, also opens a window on a time and place in American history and culture. Surprising for how much it reveals about a legend so ostensibly familiar, Conforti’s account is also fascinating for what it tells us about the world that Lizzie Borden inhabited. As Conforti—himself a native of Fall River, the site of the infamous murders—introduces us to Lizzie and her father and step-mother, he shows us why who they were matters almost as much to the trial’s outcome as the actual events of August 4, 1892. Lizzie, for instance, was an unmarried woman of some privilege, a prominent religious woman who fit the profile of what some characterized as a “Protestant nun.” She was also part of a class of moneyed women emerging in the late 19th century who had the means but did not marry, choosing instead to pursue good works and at times careers in the helping professions. Many of her contemporaries, we learn, particularly those of her class, found it impossible to believe that a woman of her background could commit such a gruesome murder. As he relates the details, known and presumed, of the murder and the subsequent trial, Conforti also fills in that background. His vividly written account creates a complete picture of the Fall River of the time, as Yankee families like the Bordens, made wealthy by textile factories, began to feel the economic and cultural pressures of the teeming population of native and foreign-born who worked at the spindles and bobbins. Conforti situates Lizzie’s austere household, uneasily balanced between the well-to-do and the poor, within this social and cultural milieu—laying the groundwork for the murder and the trial, as well as the outsize reaction that reverberates to our day. As Peter C. Hoffer remarks in his preface, there are many popular and fictional accounts of this still-controversial case, “but none so readable or so well-balanced as this.”

Presents information on the axe murders of Andrew and Abby Borden in 1892, a crime for which their daughter Lizzie went to trial, featuring reproductions of articles from forty-one newspapers across the U.S., official correspondence and transcripts, and discussion of the plays, opera, and ballet inspired by the crimes.

One Thursday morning, August 1892, in the safe and sleepy mill town of Fall River, Massachusetts, Andrew and Abby Borden were savagely hacked to death in their home. Their upstanding and respectable younger daughter, Lizzie, was suspected and tried for their murders but was acquitted of the crime. Fall River, Massachusetts, is a port town on Mount Hope Bay, at the mouth of the Taunton River. The city has numerous historical buildings and tourists come to see the famous battleship USS Massachusetts from World War 2. The ancient Indian name for the area is Quequechan, which means "falling water." In 1656 the community was established by settlers hailing from Plymouth Colony. In 1811, the first cotton mill was established, and in time the city became well-known for its textile mills, which brought it prosperity well into the 1920s. It was these mills in large part that made Lizzie Borden's father, Andrew, a rich man by 1892. David Rehak spent eight years (four years of study, two years of research, and two more years of writing and revision) in the production of this book. He became intrigued with Lizzie Borden after viewing an A&E television biography on her in 1996. According to Mr. Rehak, Lizzie was an average, unremarkable woman, and the most extraordinary, criminal or criminal suspect in history. She was a tiny grain of sand, an absolute nobody who no one took much notice of, and if she had not been accused of murder, she would have lived a low profile life and vanished from the world's memory like the flame of a candle. But after she was accused of murder, she became an unforgettable symbol and legend, an absolute somebody. The debate on whether Lizzie Borden was innocent or guiltybrings out passionate feelings and disagreements in every sort of person. In fact, during the trial, according to the New York Times, it was estimated that about nineteen hundred marriages ended in divorce because of the intense difference of opinion between husbands and wives that the controversy created. Included in this book are strikingly rare, new and unpublished revelations about Lizzie's private life. The book also contains photographs, cartoons, original artwork, quotes, and poetry, most of which are rare and never before seen. Did Lizzie Borden take an "axe" and kill her parents? The divide between those who believe she did the crime and those who don't, sometimes runs deep. This book reveals certain probabilities that should not be suppressed or ignored, probabilities that deserves scholarly and thoughtful consideration.

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "The Fall River Tragedy" (A History of the Borden Murders) by Edwin H. Porter. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.