The Trial of Lizzie Borden(27)

Hysteria was the most common explanation for the transgressive acts of middle-class women. By the end of the nineteenth century, women’s nature was seen as fundamentally different from male models of physiology. On balance, women were seen as more prone to ailments, both biological and psychological. A female pathological condition, hysteria (as opposed to neurasthenia, an ailment associated with men undone by the stresses of capitalism) dominated medical discussions related to women. Noting the prevalence of the disease in young unmarried women, doctors initially claimed that hysterical symptoms resulted from a wandering womb, and later, with greater research into brain function, assigned neurological causes. In the last two decades of the century, however, researchers could find little evidence for hysteria’s organic etiology. Yet, women remained uniquely vulnerable to the disorder and their biology or their biologically ordained role seemed somehow central to the puzzle. In large part, the extreme importance accorded to their reproductive systems relative to the rest of their physiological functions created this perception. These gendered anatomical and physiological models resulted from, and in turn justified, contemporary attitudes about women’s essential capabilities and psychology. Physicians attributed women’s illnesses to underlying nervous and moral disorders. As the innovator of the notorious “rest cure” for female hysterics, Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, explained, “Women warp morally if long nervously ill.”

These psychological and physiological understandings of women’s nature necessarily converged in criminal trials, for the state of mind of the accused was essential in determining not only guilt or innocence but also their ultimate responsibility. By far the most important factor in evaluating responsibility was evidence of menstruation. Menstruation encapsulated the entire problem of female physiology, psychology, and behavior. The onset of menses was viewed as a time of great danger, a systemic shock repeated monthly with varying intensity. Experts like the influential Austrian criminal psychologist Hans Gross contended that menstruation lowered women’s resistance to forbidden impulses, opening the floodgates to a range of criminal behaviors. Although such transgressions usually resulted in theft rather than more serious crimes, some warned of women’s potential for violence. As Gross argued, “Menstruation may bring women to the most terrible crimes. Various authors cite numerous examples of sensible women driven to do the most inconceivable things—in many cases to murder.” In the interests of “mercy” and “justice,” Dr. Henry MacNaughton-Jones, a prominent English physician, argued that “the relation of . . . a disorder of menstruation to any criminal act ought to be taken into consideration in determining the responsibility of the woman.”

Lizzie herself had testified at the inquest that she had “fleas,” a local euphemism for menstruation, in the days before the murders. On its face, this provided an innocent explanation for bloody towels soaking in a pail and a spot of blood found by police on an inner skirt. But her lawyers were aware of the potential significance of her menstruation. Arthur Phillips, Jennings’s young associate, later wrote: “There was no evidence that she was ever hysterical or abnormal in these periods, nor was there evidence of any unusual mental condition.”

Quietly, Jennings ran down some disturbing rumors. His notebook contains the entry “Ask Emma if she took cat out which scratched her, put it on chopping block & cut head off.” There were several versions of this story making the rounds. For example, an anonymous correspondent advised Marshal Hilliard “to look up the cat story in which Lizzie Borden killed some time ago.” Another anonymous correspondent wrote to Knowlton that the Bordens’ milkman “knew for a fact that Miss Lizzie decapitated a kitten which belonged to her stepmother.” There seemed to be no foundation for the stories, though one “unwilling” writer, a Mrs. Apthorp of Boston, helpfully suggested that the animal hair found on one of the hatchets “which Professor Wood said looked like a cow’s hair, may have come from this cat.” The cat rumor later resurfaced during the trial. Elizabeth Jordan, correspondent for the New York World, wrote: “Nobody would be authority for this story; everybody had heard it from somebody else. But it went the rounds all day long and there was more blood with a sharper axe every time it was told.”

On behalf of the defense, Andrew Jennings flatly rejected the notion of insanity and promised the trial would vindicate his client. Lizzie Borden, however, was less confident, writing to her friend Annie Lindsey in January 1893, “I cannot for the life of me see how you and the rest of my friends can be so full of hope over the case.” Less than a month before the trial, she wrote to Annie again, wondering if “the tangled threads would never be smoothed out.” Her own doubts were mirrored in the private correspondence of Knowlton and Attorney General Pillsbury. Because Knowlton and Pillsbury agreed that “neither of us can escape the conclusion that she must have had some knowledge of the occurrence,” they were obligated to proceed with the prosecution. “Personally I would like very much to get rid of the trial of the case,” Knowlton wrote to Pillsbury, “however, I cannot see my way clear to any disposition of the case other than a trial.” “The case,” he continued, “has proceeded so far and an indictment has been found by the grand jury of the county that it does not seem to me that we ought to take the responsibility of discharging her without trial, even though there is every reasonable expectation of a verdict of not guilty . . . I think it may well be that the jury might disagree upon the case. But even in my most sanguine moments I have scarcely expected a verdict of guilty.”