The Trial of Lizzie Borden(56)

The next two witnesses were also Harvard men. Dr. Frank Draper was both a professor of legal medicine (also known as medical jurisprudence) and the medical examiner for Suffolk County (including Boston). Draper had been present at the autopsy performed on August 11. At the time of the Borden murders, he was a former president of the Massachusetts MedicoLegal Society, the organization of medical examiners. By statute, medical examiners were called in “all cases of suspicion.” Draper himself had already investigated over 3,500 deaths. By the end of his career, that number would rise to over 8,000 deaths, and, as a capstone, he would publish a Textbook of Legal Medicine in 1905. Earlier, he had apparently had some doubts about the times of death. In his correspondence with Attorney General Pillsbury, Knowlton assured his boss that “Dr. Draper is coming round on our side in great shape.” Draper himself submitted a memorandum showing “the anatomical proofs of the priority of Mrs. Borden’s death,” a memorandum that tracked his later testimony. As a pragmatic matter, he recommended avoiding “incidental questions, which are very fascinating in themselves”—such as the “probable first blow in each of the two cases” and “the relative position of Mrs. Borden and her assailant when the first blow was struck”—on the grounds that they would “afford ready opportunity for disagreement among the medical witnesses.” Such disagreements, he thought, ran the risk of “interpos[ing] a little dust between the eyes of the jury and the main questions, namely, what was the cause of the deaths and who was the guilty agent?” To that practical consideration, he added a personal note: “Will you kindly put me in communication with a New Bedford host or hostess who will take care of my animal wants as to sleeping and eating during my visit? . . . I am always upset and good for nothing if I am deprived of sleep.”

Skull of Andrew Borden, courtesy of Fall River Historical Society



Draper displayed plaster casts of skulls on which he had drawn marks for wounds, and, while holding the one representing Andrew Borden, methodically detailed each blow. Jennings interrupted to ask how many had “penetrate[d] the bone of the skull?” “Four of them,” he replied. “The one which cut through the eye, and three . . . above and in front of the left ear.” It was almost too much for Lizzie Borden, who put her head down against the back of Robinson’s chair. Fortunately, it was time for the midday recess.

The afternoon brought a return of Dr. Draper and his plaster skulls to the stand. But after continuing his meticulous discussion of the injuries, Draper required an additional exhibit. Knowlton asked Dr. Dolan to bring in the actual skull of Andrew Borden. Ralph remarked that the skull was “done up in a white handkerchief and looked like a bouquet, such as a man carries to his sweetheart.” By arrangement, Lizzie was spared this display. According to Howard, “District Atty Knowlton, in spite of his forceful manner, has a very tender heart, is a good husband and a considerate father.” He, therefore, agreed to let Lizzie Borden wait in “the little adjacency, where although she could neither see nor be seen, she could hear all she chose.” Her absence seemed especially fortuitous when Draper unwrapped the skull and the jaw was separated from the rest. Even worse, when Draper put the skull on a makeshift stand of law books, “The old man’s jaw sagged back and forth in a grisly suggestion of speech.” Recalling that moment, Elizabeth Jordan wrote: “Spectators caught their breath and then exhaled it in a gasp that swept the courtroom like a great sigh.” Was he “trying to testify”? Ralph scribbled a question to Jordan: “If the old man, awakened by the first blow, saw his murderer would he tell who it was? If he saw that it was his daughter would he say so?” Jordan replied, “No, not if he was a good man.” Howard was struck by the ghastly nature of the exhibits: “The skulls didn’t look like the skulls we see in museums, dried and covered with parchment skin. They have been scraped, cleansed, and whitened, the jaws being separated from the general skull.” He wondered: “Hideous indeed are they to casual observers, but what would they have been to Miss Lizzie Borden . . . with their eyeless sockets, their toothless gums, their fleshless bones . . . mute witnesses to the brutality of their assassin.”

Skull of Abby Borden, courtesy of Fall River Historical Society



The reporters may have been horrified, but Draper “had a cheery way of fitting the different hatchets into the wounds in the skull.” Ralph observed: “Occasionally he would leave one sticking in and then parade it round in front of the jury.” Draper initially used a tin plate to demonstrate that the murder weapon had a blade of three and a half inches, the length of the handleless hatchet; at one point, a colleague came forward to hold the skull while Draper fit the plate into a crater. At Knowlton’s urging, he used the hatchet itself. Most important, he testified that all the blows could “have been produced by the use of an ordinary hatchet in the hands of a woman of ordinary strength.” As a way of helping the jury overcome any lingering doubt that a woman could have inflicted the wounds, Draper also explained that Andrew’s skull was very thin, so thin in the temple region that light passed through it.

Dr. Draper fits hatchet into skull, Boston Globe



Draper, like the other medical experts, explained the likely position of the murderer during the crimes. In Abby’s murder, “The assailant . . . stood astride the prostrate body of Mrs. Borden, as she was lying face downward on the floor” except when inflicting the wound in the scalp on the left side of her head. That was delivered “while Mrs. Borden was standing and facing her assailant.” As for Andrew, he concluded that “he was lying on the sofa on his right side, with the face turned well toward the right.” He agreed “that the assailant stood about the head of the sofa, above the head of Mr. Borden, and struck downward upon his head and face.” He could not conclusively determine “the direction of the spattering or scattering of the blood.”