At about 11:10 a.m., on Thursday, August 4, 1892, a heavy, hot summer day, at No. 92 Second Street, Fall River, Massachusetts, Bridget Sullivan, the hired girl in the household of Andrew J. Borden, resting in her attic room, was startled to hear Lizzie Borden, Andrew's daughter, cry out, "Maggie, come down!"
"What's the matter?" Bridget (called "Maggie" by the Borden sisters) asked.
"Come down quick! Father's dead! Somebody's come in and killed him!"
Andrew Borden, 70, was one of the richest men in Fall River, a director on the boards of several banks, a commercial landlord whose holdings were considerable. He was a tall, thin, white-haired dour man, known for his thrift and admired for his business abilities. He chose to live with his second wife and his two grown spinster daughters in a small house in an unfashionable part of town, close to his business interests. He was not particularly likable, but, despite the frugal nature of their daily lives, moderately generous to his wife and daughters.
When Bridget hurried downstairs, she found Lizzie standing at the back door. Lizzie stopped her from going into the sitting room, saying, "Don't go in there. Go and get the doctor. Run."
Bridget ran across the street to their neighbor and family physician, Dr. Bowen. He was out, but Bridget told Mrs. Bowen that Mr. Borden had been killed. Bridget ran back to the house, and Lizzie sent her to summon the Borden sisters' friend, Miss Alice Russell, who lived a few blocks away.
The portrait of Bridget, taken in her early twenties, shows a sturdy, vaguely pretty Irish maid, which is exactly what she was. At the time of the murders she was 26 years old, and had been working in the Borden household since 1889. There is no evidence that she was other than an exemplary young woman. She had emigrated from Ireland in 1886, and belonged to a socially discriminated class, the Irish of Massachusetts. Her testimony, which has been published in its entirety in the volume edited by Jeans, was straightforward, consistent, and neither helpful nor damaging to Lizzie. She did not spend the night of the murders in the Borden house, but at a neighbor's, although she spent the next night (Friday) in her third-floor room, leaving the house on Saturday, never to return. One legend is that Bridget was paid off by Lizzie, even to the extent of being given funds to buy a large farm back in Ireland. While it is likely that Lizzie or Emma provided the funds for transport back to Ireland, there is no evidence that more than that had come from Lizzie. The story of her being well-off is unlikely, since she returned to the United States a few years later, marrying and moving to Butte, Montana, where she died in 1948 in very modest circumstances.
In the meanwhile, the neighbor to the North, Mrs. Adelaide Churchill, saw that something distressful was happening at the Borden house. She called across to Lizzie, who was at the back entrance to the house and asked if anything was wrong. Lizzie responded by saying, "Oh, Mrs. Churchill, please come over! Someone has killed Father!"
Mrs. Churchill asked, "Where is your mother?"
Lizzie said that she did not know and that Abby Borden, her stepmother, had received a note asking her to respond to someone who was sick. She told Mrs. Churchill that Bridget was unable to find Dr. Bowen. Mrs. Churchill volunteered to send her handyman to find a doctor and to send him to a telephone to summon help. The police station, about four hundred yards from 92 Second Street, received a message to respond to an incident at No. 92 at 11:15 a.m.
After sending her handy man and informing a passer-by of the trouble, Mrs. Churchill returned to the Borden kitchen. Dr. Bowen had arrived, along with Bridget, who had hurried back from informing Miss Russell. Dr. Bowen examined the body and asked for a sheet to cover it. Bridget said, "If I knew where Mrs. Whitehead (Abby Borden's younger sister) was, I would go and see if Mrs. Borden was there and tell her that Mr. Borden was very sick."
Lizzie said, "Maggie, I am almost positive I heard her coming in. Go upstairs and see."
Bridget refused. Mrs. Churchill volunteered to go up and see if Abby had returned. Bridget reluctantly went with her. The two went up the front staircase together, and before they reached the landing they were able to see that Mrs. Borden was lying on the floor of the guestroom.
Bridget saw Mrs. Borden's body. Mrs. Churchill rushed by her, viewed the obviously dead body, and rushed downstairs, saying, "There's another one!"
Abby Borden was a short, shy, obese woman of 64, who had been a spinster until the age of 36, when she married the widowed Andrew Borden. She was devoted to her younger half-sister, Sarah Whitehead, to whom she had been a mother. Other than Sarah and Sarah's daughter, Abby, who had been named for her aunt, she appeared to have no other intimate relationships. She apparently provided, within the limits of Andrew's penuriousness, a comfortable home for her husband, who clearly appreciated her. Her stepdaughters were not particularly close to her. Lizzie, in fact, had been calling her "Mrs. Borden" for the past several years, rather than "Mother."
In the meantime, Alice Russell had arrived, and Dr. Bowen, having left for a brief time to telegraph Lizzie's older sister Emma, who was visiting friends in the neighboring town of Fairhaven, had returned, and resumed examining Andrew Borden's body. It was on its right side on the sofa, feet still resting on the floor. His head was bent slightly to the right and his face had been cut by eleven blows. One eye had been cut in half and was protruding from his face, his nose had been severed. Most of the cuts were within a small area extending from the eye and nose to the ear. Blood was still seeping from the wounds. There were spots of blood on the floor, on the wall above the sofa and on a picture hanging on the wall. It appeared that he had been attacked from above and behind him as he slept.
Dr. Bowen found that Mrs. Borden had been struck more than a dozen times, from the back. The autopsy later revealed that there had been nineteen blows. Her head had been crushed by the same hatchet or axe that had presumably killed Mr. Borden, with one misdirected blow striking the back of her scalp, almost at the neck. The blood on Mrs. Borden's body was dark and congealed.
Dr. Bowen was heavily involved in the activities on the day of the murder, diagnosing Abby' early morning distress and fears as food poisoning, checking on Andrew and the rest of the household shortly thereafter, being the first to examine the bodies, sending a telegram to Emma, assisting Dr. Dolan with the initial autopsies, prescribing sulphate of morphine as a tranquilizer for Lizzie --- in short, from about 11:30 a.m. on, he was a constant presence. His involvement with the family, particularly on August 4, has led to his being a major figure in some of the conspiracies developed around the murders.
Within minutes of receiving the call at 11:15, the City Marshall, Rufus B. Hilliard, dispatched Officer George W. Allen to the Borden house. He ran the four hundred yards to the house, saw that Andrew Borden was dead, and deputized a passer-by, Charles Sawyer, to stand guard while he went back to the stationhouse for assistance. Within minutes of his return, seven additional officers went to the murder scene. By 11:45 a.m., the Medical Examiner, William Dolan, passing by the Borden house and noting the flurry of activity, was on the scene.
Thus, the discovery of at least one murder happened at 11:10 a.m., and within the next thirty-five minutes, the authorities were on the scene.
THE CAST OF CHARACTERS
Major Participants:
The Victims:
Mrs. Abby Durfee Gray Borden (1828-1892), Lizzie's stepmother
Mr. Andrew Jackson Borden (1822-1892), Lizzie's father
The Accused:
Miss Lizzie Andrew Borden (1860-1927)
The Household:
Miss Emma Borden (1849-1927), Lizzie's sister
John Vinnicum Morse (1833-1912), Lizzie's maternal uncle, visiting
Bridget ("Maggie") Sullivan (1866-1948), the Borden maid
The Judges:
Josiah C. Blaisdell, presiding judge, Second District Court
Chief Justice Albert Mason (1836-1905), Superior Court of Massachusetts
Associate Justice Caleb Blodgett (1832-1901)
Associate Justice Justin Dewey (1836-1900)
The Prosecution:
Hosea M. Knowlton (1847-1902), later Attorney General of Massachusetts
William H. Moody (1853-1917), later Attorney General of the United States, and Supreme Court Justice
The Defense:
Andrew J. Jennings (1849-1923), Borden family lawyer
George D. Robinson (1834-1896), former Governor of Massachusetts
Melvin O. Adams (1850-1920), Boston attorney
The Investigators:
Rufus B. Hilliard, City Marshal
John Fleet, Deputy Marshal
Michael Mullaly, Officer
Philip Harrington, Sergeant
Dr. William A. Dolan, Medical Examiner
Dr. Edward S. Wood, Professor of Chemistry, Harvard
Relatives, Ministers, Friends, Neighbors, Witnesses
Sarah Gray Whitehead, Abby Borden's younger half-sister
Abby Borden Whitehead Potter, Sarah's daughter
Hiram Harrington, Andrew Borden's brother-in-law
Luana Borden Harrington, Andrew Borden's sister
W. Walker Jubb, minister, First Congregational Church, Fall River
Edwin A. Buck, minister, Central Congregational Church, Fall River
Miss Alice Russell, friend of the Borden sisters
Mrs. Adelaide Churchill, next door neighbor
Eli Bence, drugstore clerk
Dr. Seabury W. Bowen, Borden family physician and neighbor
