Curious Chapbooks & Hysterical Histories

THE LIZZIE LEGEND

Lizzie Borden took an ax

Gave her mother forty whacks;

When she saw what she had done

She gave her father forty-one!

Everyone knows the ditty, sung to the tune of "Ta-Ra-Ra-Boom-De Ay!" but no one really knows the person behind the song. For more than one hundred years, Lizzie Borden and her hatchet have caused more confusion, speculation and debate than any other murder case in American history.

Who was Lizzie Borden and why should we care so? The American wit Dorothy Parker once wrote, "I will believe till eternity, or possibly beyond it, that Lizzie Borden did it with her little hatchet, and whoever says she didn't commits the sin of sins, the violation of an idol (Reach, 59)." Heady praise from one American original to another -- but an idol?

Lizzie Borden, the acquitted suspect but legendary perpetrator of the grisly double murder of her father and stepmother, becomes in time all things to all people. In the one hundred years since the Fall River Murders, Lizzie has become the subject of plays, movies and one ballet. During her own time she was a cause celebre of a women's movement and an example of Christian piety. Her acquittal is a tribute to the American justice system and its main tenet of innocent until proven guilty. In may ways she is a success story, and it is how her own dark dreams coincide with the America Dream that makes her legendary.

Opinion about Lizzie was divided, even by those who knew her. During her trial, her able defense attorney George Robinson referred to her as "little girl," although she was a stout spinster of 32. No doubt the 12 good men and true on the jury saw her as a defenseless orphan, even if contrived by her own ingenuity. The neighborly Dr. Bowen, who was so helpful to Lizzie during the police investigation, no doubt felt some paternal concern over her, particularly considering the cryptic remark he made when he was caught burning evidence. Lizzie's sister Emma regarded herself as Lizzie's mother after their real mother died, even giving Lizzie her own bedroom after Lizzie's grand tour of Europe. Whatever Lizzie's stepmother Abby thought, she kept to herself -- even when Lizzie killed her cat or complained of her to tradespeople or refused to speak or eat meals with her. Certainly Bridget the maid thought well of Lizzie; she testified in court that she took Lizzie's side in family arguments. Lizzie was grateful enough for Bridget's testimony to buy Bridget a farm in Ireland -- so long as she would never return to Fall River again.

Finally, the question is, what did Mr. Borden think of Lizzie? It would be natural for him to think of his youngest daughter as his "little girl" and treat her as the baby, but was there something else to their relationship? When his mutilated corpse was found, Lizzie's graduation ring was sill worn around his little finger. This happened several months after he beheaded all of Lizzie's pigeons in their barn -- the same barn in which Lizzie supposedly ate pears while his murder took place. Whatever Lizzie Borden was to all these people, she remains a cipher, the empty center to perhaps the most perplexing crime in American history.

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