Curious Chapbooks & Hysterical Histories

GRUESOME DEATHS

Whether the story is accurate or not, by 9 o'clock that hot August morning Abby had died much the same way as the cat. Her head was nearly torn off her shoulders by a blunt instrument as she lay face down on the floor of the upstairs bedroom. Forensic experts at the time judge that she had seen her attacker when struck (Radin, 147). When she was examined by Dr. Bowen, he found her head crushed by 19 ax or hatchet wounds in the back of the scalp (Sullivan, 31). One wound at the back of the neck was misdirected, for the blow had cut a "great and grotesque flap" from the back of the scalp (Sullivan, 31). Because of the lack of blood, it has been surmised that Abby died from the first blow, and with death her heart stopped pumping blood. As Lincoln writes:

Abby had apparently been hacked by someone who stood astride the body after the first blow (probably the one on the nape of the neck) had felled her. Her blood had spurted forward and not high or wide; there was none on the bedspread just beside her, and of the wall in front of her head only the skirting board was stained (114).

Once the killer finished with the victim, the 200-pound corpse lay sprawled out on the knees face down waiting to be discovered two hours later.

Meanwhile, Old Andrew Borden went calmly on his rounds of business to the Union Savings Bank, to the National Union Bank, to the First National Bank of Fall River and then to see one of his tenants, the hatter Jonathan Clegg. At the haberdasher's shop, Borden was seen picking up a discarded lock, "badly broken," and slipping it into his pocket (Sullivan, 27). At 10:40 a.m. his next-door neighbor Mrs. Kelly saw him at his front door as she hurried on to a dentist's appointment. He would not leave the house alive, for less than an hour later his daughter Lizzie called up to the maid, resting in her attic room, "Come down quick! Father's dead! Somebody came in and killed him (Pearson, 201)!"

Friendly Dr. Bowen, who lived across the street, was summoned at once. Later, when recalling the sight of the dead body in the cramped little sitting room, he said, "Physician that I am, and accustomed to all kinds of horrible sights, it sickened me to look upon the dead man's face (Pearson, 230)."

Here is Edmund Pearson's famous description of the scene:

This was a small room, nearly square, with but two windows, both on the south side. The floor was covered with the usual garish, flowered carpet, customary in such houses at that time, and the wallpaper was of a similarly disturbing pattern. The furniture was mahogany or black walnut, upholstered with the invariable black horsehair. On the north side of the room, opposite the windows, was a large sofa, and on this lay the dead body of Mr. Borden with his head and face so hacked as to be unrecognizable even to his friend and physician, Dr. Bowen (Sullivan, 203).

Again, the mysterious murderer struck violently to the head. According to Robert Sullivan:

Borden's head was bent slightly to the right, but his face was almost unrecognizable as human; one eye had been cut in half and protruded in a ghastly manner, his nose had been severed, and there were eleven distinct cuts within a relatively small area extending from the eye and nose to the ears. Fresh blood was still seeping from the wounds, which were so severe that the first of the eleven blows must have killed him (30).

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