Avatar feed
Responses: 5
LTC Stephen F.
6
6
0
Edited >1 y ago
Thank you, my friend TSgt Joe C. for reminding us about American woman Lizzie Andrew Borden who is best known for being the main suspect in the 1892 axe murders of her father and stepmother in Fall River, Massachusetts.

An infuriatingly catchy 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”.

Background from theguardian.com/books/2016/dec/04/lizzie-borden-40-whacks-lasting-fascination
"Here in Britain if we know Lizzie Borden at all it’s probably as the gruesome subject of an infuriatingly catchy 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”. But that is all set to change as a host of new projects including a film, Lizzie Borden, starring Chloe Sevigny and Kristen Stewart, a highly anticipated debut novel, See What I Have Done, and a revival of a cult US rock musical, Lizzie, place America’s most famous probable parricide back in the spotlight again.

The new projects mark the culmination of a recent surge of interest in Borden’s story almost 125 years after she first hit the headlines. In 2014 US cable channel Lifetime showed a television film, Lizzie Borden Took An Ax, and followed that up with a 2015 series The Lizzie Borden Chronicles, both of which received a mixed response. Earlier this year author Sarah Miller received considerably better reviews for her non-fiction work The Borden Murders: Lizzie Borden and The Trial of the Century, while the crime scene itself has been rebranded as the Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast Museum since the mid 1990s and does a roaring trade enticing true crime fans, ghost hunters and even the odd would-be author through its doors.

“There’s definitely been a revival of interest in her story,” says Richard Behrens who runs the popular Lizzie Borden podcast in addition to writing a series of books featuring a young pre-murders Lizzie as an eager beaver girl detective. “In part I think its that there’s a revival of interest in the Victorian era in general – look at something like Penny Dreadful – but it’s also the case that the Lizzie Borden story has always been part of American mythology, probably because her trial for murder happened at a time when mass media in the form of newspapers exploded so there was just that bit more coverage. Plus, of course, she got off.”
Leah Woodburn, the editor of Sarah Schmidt’s disturbing and visceral take on the murders, See What I Have Done, agrees that the Borden murders resonate because we will never really know how the tragic events played out. The basic facts are as follows: on 4 August 1892 Lizzie Borden alerted the family maid, Bridget Sullivan, to her father’s mutilated body. He had been hit 10 or 11 times with “a hatchet-like weapon” while sleeping on the sofa. The body of Abby Borden, Lizzie’s stepmother, was found similarly mutilated in the family guest room. She had been struck 18 times. Lizzie’s sister, Emma, was out of town at the time of the murders and Bridget was apparently recovering from a bout of food poisoning. Another possible suspect, house guest John Morse, the brother of Lizzie’s deceased mother, produced a strong alibi placing him away from the scene. The police subsequently arrested 32-year-old Lizzie. Her trial the following year was a media sensation and ended in acquittal. Lizzie returned to Fall River to a new home, Maplecroft, where she would live for the rest of her life, dying in 1927 aged 67.

“It’s a classic whodunnit, locked-room story,” says Woodburn. “Lizzie might have been the main suspect but she was acquitted and because no one else was ever charged that leaves the door open for endless speculation and new ideas. In that sense it’s like Jack the Ripper – everyone has their own theories of who committed the crime.”
And the Borden case is not the only true-crime story attracting attention. There is a growing fascination with fictionalised takes on the genre from the BBC1 hit Rillington Place, about the John Christie murders in London, to America’s The People v OJ Simpson.
Novels too are increasing looking to put a fresh spin on past misdeeds. Anna Mazzola’s The Unseeing, published this summer, covers the real-life tale of Sarah Gale, accused of helping the 1830s Edgware Road murderer James Greenacre cover up his crime. Jake Arnott’s The Fatal Tree, out in February, delves deep into the life of the Georgian criminal Edgworth Bess denounced by her former lover Jack Sheppard with the damning words “a more wicked, deceitful and lascivious wretch is not known in England”. Emma Flint’s Little Deaths, published in January, finds inspiration in the notorious case of Alice Crimmins, who was tried for the murder of her two children in New York in the 1960s.

Christina Ricci in The Lizzie Borden Chronicles. Photograph: Lifetime Televi/REX/Shutterstock
So what is driving this sudden interest in long-buried crimes? “People have long been fascinated by fiction and drama with their roots in real crimes – many Victorian-era novelists were inspired by real murders,” says Mazzola. “But there’s definitely something of a resurgence, partly because we are drawn to what we believe to be genuine and partly because we are fascinated and horrified by the peculiarities of other people’s lives – in particular by what would lead someone to commit a terrible crime. And in novels we get the satisfying conclusion we don’t get with real-life crime. It constructs order from the chaos.”
Francesca Main, editorial director at Picador, agrees, adding that the phenomenon has been boosted by the continued success of the psychological or domestic thriller. “The boom in psychological thrillers means that readers have gone from characters we sympathise with or relate to complicated, difficult and not necessarily likeable heroines and this interest is now starting to merge with a continued enthusiasm for historical fiction,” she explains. It’s also the case that events such as the Borden murders resonate because we find their echo in our own recent past. “When I read Little Deaths I didn’t know the story it was based on but reading about the lead character, Ruth Malone, reminded me of other recent cases where women were torn apart in the media,” Main says.
“It might be set in a very specific place and time but what it says about women and mothers and how they’re expected to behave rang true today.”
That’s certainly the case with the Borden murders: when Lizzie Borden went to trial much was made of her odd behaviour after her father’s death, her failure to grieve in “normal” or “acceptable” ways, her inability to grasp the situation she was in.
There are parallels with recent cases, such as that of Amanda Knox. “There’s a line that Amanda Knox says in the recent documentary about her that summed up the reaction about her: “Either I’m a psychopath or I’m you’,” says Sarah Weinman, editor of Women Crime Writers: Eight Suspense Novels of the 1940s and 50s. “Women like her make people very uncomfortable because they don’t behave ‘normally’ even though there is no such thing as ‘normal’ after traumatic events. And because there is ambiguity, legal, morally, in the media, or otherwise, about what happened that discomfort increases.”
Flint, author of Little Deaths, agrees. “There’s definitely a sense with these cases of women being judged because they don’t behave in the ways in which women are supposed to behave,” she says. “We have no idea if they’re guilty or not guilty but we judge them on whether they look right or whether we think their behaviour is fundamentally wrong. In the case of Alice Crimmins it became all about not only how she wasn’t grieving in the way a mother should but also that, prior to that, she didn’t look how a mother should look. She didn’t dress or act the way she was supposed to and the police, her neighbours and the court judged her for that.”
It is also the case that each generation views these cases afresh, filtering them through a new set of feelings and fears. “It’s interesting that although the real Lizzie is fascinating enough people still project their own darkness or worst impulses on to the story,” says Behrens. “Or alternatively they try and make her more sympathetic. Each person who comes to her story views her through their eyes.”
And perhaps the most primal and immediate thrill from following these cases in today’s era is the fact that you can read the Lizzie Borden novel or watch the Lizzie Borden film and then head straight online to try to sift fact from fiction.
“I do think the true crime element brings an extra dimension to readers,” admits Woodburn. “If I’m honest my first reaction to See What I Have Done was to read it and then Google the bejesus out of it. I had to find out more.”
See What I Have Done is published on 4 May. Lizzie The Musical is at the Greenwich Theatre, London, from 22 February. Little Deaths is published on 1 January. The Unseeing is out now.

LIZZIE BORDEN’S LIFE
19 July 1860 Lizzie Borden is born
26 March 1863 Her mother dies
6 June 1865 Mr Borden marries Abby Durfee Gray
3 August 1892 John Morse, Lizzie’s uncle, arrives to stay at the family home
4 August 1892 Andrew and Abby Borden are murdered
11 August 1892 Lizzie is arrested and charged
5 June 1893 Lizzie is tried for the murder of her father and stepmother
20 June 1893 Lizzie is acquitted due to lack of evidence. She returns to home town of Fall River and buys a house, where she lives with her sister until the latter moves out in 1904
1 June 1927 Lizzie dies"

Lizzie Borden (Documentary)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nKRSNy_zK0

FYI LTC Stephen C. LTC (Join to see) Lt Col John (Jack) Christensen Lt Col Charlie Brown Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. Maj William W. "Bill" Price Maj Marty Hogan SCPO Morris Ramsey SFC William Farrell SGT Mark Halmrast Sgt Randy Wilber Sgt John H. SGT Gregory Lawritson CPL Dave Hoover SPC Margaret Higgins SSgt Brian Brakke 1stSgt Eugene Harless SSG William Jones SSG Diane R.
(6)
Comment
(0)
Avatar small
Sgt Commander, Dav Chapter #90
3
3
0
TSgt Joe C., after reading your post, I don't think I would ever have wanted to be near Ms. Borden in her day!!!
(3)
Comment
(0)
Avatar small
PVT Mark Zehner
2
2
0
I hear hacking lol
(2)
Comment
(0)
TSgt Joe C.
(1)
Reply
(0)
Avatar small

Join nearly 2 million former and current members of the US military, just like you.

close