The Trial of Lizzie Borden(29)

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New Bedford, Massachusetts, had not been a consensus choice for the trial venue. Fall River papers lobbied for a local trial, given that all the witnesses resided there. The Fall River Daily Evening News argued that “convenience and expense are in favor of this city.” Civic leaders were also keen to realize the financial benefits of hosting the Borden trial. The defense preferred Taunton, the Bristol County seat, where Lizzie Borden had been housed since her preliminary hearing. On December 12, 1892, Jennings wrote to Attorney General Pillsbury: “My client is very anxious to have the case tried at Taunton as she very much prefers to stay at her present quarters.” But when the trial date was finally set for June 5, the starting date of New Bedford’s regular criminal court term, journalists correctly guessed that New Bedford would be the venue.

New Bedford was fifteen miles east of Fall River, and at least thirty minutes by the trolley train. It was known for its prominence as a whaling port for much of the nineteenth century. As a result of this history, New Bedford had once been the richest city per capita in America, the fortunes of its “blubber aristocracy” extending beyond whaling and into textile mills. Considered “one of the most beautiful towns in New England,” its central residential district boasted “grand elms, gorgeous gardens, and green lawns.” Within a few blocks of some of the earliest mansions stood the Bristol County courthouse. The Bristol County courthouse in New Bedford was built in 1831 in Greek Revival style. One observer declared it “one of the most picturesque buildings in this very picturesque old city.” It boasted four classical pillars in the front and a bell tower, but, though set off by a large green lawn, “it was completely eclipsed in architectural and material appearances” by its surrounding “pretentious residences.” Its second-floor courtroom had nothing like the capacity for the audience of spectators and journalists expected for the Borden trial. Despite its limitations, the New Bedford court prepared for the press siege.

The trial of Lizzie Borden, according to the Providence Journal, would be “one of the greatest murder trials in the world’s history.” The New York World more modestly declared it “the trial of the most extraordinary criminal case in the history of New England.” Regardless, the Boston Globe proclaimed “It will be impossible to exaggerate the interest felt and manifested by intelligent readers throughout the country in the outcome of this trial of a comparatively young woman for the murder of her father and stepmother.” The Boston Globe estimated that, among its own readership, “there are at this moment 100,000 persons devoting what they are pleased to call their minds to a hopeless analysis of this tremendous case.” To satisfy this demand, so many correspondents and reporters converged on New Bedford that the New Bedford Evening Standard questioned whether a more distinguished collection of newspaper writers were ever detailed to cover a murder trial. To accommodate the journalists, the second-floor courtroom was modified to include five extra tables in the space usually reserved for witnesses. Each table would accommodate five reporters seated on high cane-back stools. In use, the arrangement brought to mind a schoolhouse invigilation, reporters silently scribbling away with the high sheriff keeping charge. The Associated Press was allotted four places, with the remainder to representatives of Massachusetts papers. The Fall River and New Bedford papers were given priority. But the New York papers rebelled; Joseph Pulitzer’s paper the New York World asked for the chief justice’s intercession. The New York petition granted, Sheriff Wright partitioned the prisoner’s dock, installing another long table behind a temporary rail to make room for the New York papers. The wire services, by contrast, were relegated to a horse shed at the rear of the courthouse. To make the accommodations marginally less grim, a floor was laid and the structure was divided into three compartments with the west and east ends dedicated to the Postal Telegraph and the Standard and Associated Press, respectively. Eight lesser wire services were crammed together in the middle. The Boston Globe had its own dedicated wire service in a separate structure tucked around the corner. So many wires traveled out from those buildings, one wag noted, “you could hang all the washings of all Bristol County on them.”

Interior of courtroom, courtesy of Fall River Historical Society



Julian Ralph of the New York Sun and Joseph Howard, Jr., who covered the trial for the Boston Globe and the New York Recorder, were the best known of the group. Both were exemplars of the story rather than information model of the news, “narrat[ing] the news with an eye toward character, plot, setting, dialogue, dramatic pacing, and other literary elements,” a style termed the “new journalism.” By 1893, Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World had surpassed the Sun in circulation (150,000 daily readers) and, despite its earned reputation for pioneering yellow journalism, practiced a mix of the informational and story-based journalism that owed less to tabloid journalism than the Sun. The Sun remained the least expensive and the most accessible. It is perhaps best remembered for its 1897 editorial with the immortal line “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.”

Julian Ralph, public domain, from Google Books scan of Frank M. O’Brien, The Story of the Sun (New York: George H. Doran Company, 1918)



Julian Ralph had already covered momentous stories of the day, including Henry Ward Beecher’s adultery trial in 1875, before joining the Sun, then the New York paper with the largest circulation. He worked hard at his craft: turning events into stories required, in his words, “know[ing] what to write and what to leave out, what to make the most of, what is worth a paragraph, and what is worth a whole page of a newspaper.” In 1893, he was at the height of his powers: he covered Grover Cleveland’s inauguration as president in March, the opening of the World’s Columbian Fair in Chicago in May, and the legislative debates on free silver in Washington, DC. In addition to his work at the Sun, between 1890 and 1895, he published nearly 150 articles in major magazines like Harper’s. He had turned forty at the end of May, looked every inch of his six-foot height, and radiated good health. Crediting his constitution for his physical endurance and his innate disposition for his “unconquerable persistence”—both, in his view, essential for a newspaperman—he would ultimately travel to Russia, China, and South Africa during the Boer War. He later explained: “The life of every journalist is as hard as nails; that of the special correspondents is even harder.” Yet a certain fastidiousness seemed at odds with his swashbuckling adventures: he wore his thinning hair neatly parted and his handlebar moustache narrowed to a precisely waxed point.