The Trial of Lizzie Borden(59)

Chapter 8


INTENT, DELIBERATION, AND PREPARATION





Interesting incidents in the Borden trial, Boston Globe



It was widely thought that the prosecution would conclude its case on Wednesday. As he reflected on the developments in the trial, Joe Howard praised the efficiency of the court: “always on time, never loses a second.” Julian Ralph, too, commented on the pace of the trial, taking special note of how many witnesses had testified: “The phenomenal feature of this court is still the factorylike facility with which it shucks and shells the witnesses. There is a door behind the witness stand, and it never yet has been closed. It is a great spout that runs witnesses day after day as a faucet emits water.” Even the stenographer, an anonymous figure of apparent continuity, was regularly refreshed: “The court stenographer sits at a desk under the eyes of the witnesses. But the stenographer is in reality a whole troop of short hand men . . . [who] dart in and out.” Once cycled out, they handed off their scribblings to the pool of pretty “typewriter girls” who then produced the daily transcript.

Witnesses waiting to testify, Boston Globe





WEDNESDAY, JUNE 14, 1893




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The previous night’s rain did nothing to improve the temperature on Wednesday. Joe Howard described the atmosphere as “more discomfort, heat, and humidity combined, than I had supposed possible in a city so advantageously situated.” Even the locals found it oppressive. The Fall River Daily Globe declared: “There is no nourishment for the lungs in it. It is like breathing at the bottom of a river.” Howard wondered: “How can the jury endure the physical strain?” He continued, “[T]hey are wilting in this torridic atmosphere, subjected as they are to more unusual confinement and seclusion, not alone from their ordinary occupation but from out of door exercise and healthful conditions to which one and all are used.” Lizzie Borden, too, appeared “limp and without energy.” (No matter how hot the day, she always wore gloves.) By contrast, despite the weather and the reversals in their case to date, the prosecution was eager to continue: “Knowlton rushed up the stairs two steps at a time, quickly and closely followed by his younger and smaller associate, Mr. Moody, both anxious and with determination in every glance.”

City Marshal Rufus Hilliard, who had led the Fall River police department for seven years, was the first witness. To Joe Howard, Hilliard was “the deus ex machina of the whole business, having made up his mind in the earliest stage of the game that the Fall River police must have a theory.” “A fine, orderly looking man,” Hilliard sported “an enormous drooping brown moustache” and was outfitted for the summer heat in a light gray suit.

Hilliard testified about the official police response to the events at the Borden house. First, he recounted the newsdealer John Cunningham’s call to him on August 4 to report the trouble on Second Street. After listing the officers he dispatched to the scene, he testified about his own search of the barn and outdoor areas on the morning of the murder (he had found the barn loft “almost suffocating”), on the Saturday after the funeral service (when he had to disperse a crowd of between two and three hundred outside the house), and on Sunday, August 7. Then he provided a window into the atmosphere of the Borden house the weekend after the murders. On the evening of Saturday, August 6, Hilliard and Mayor Coughlin called upon the inmates of the house—Morse, Emma, and Lizzie. In Hilliard’s account of the visit, corroborated by others present, the mayor advised the family to stay inside for a few days because of the large crowd outside. Lizzie then asked if anyone in the house was suspected. After some hesitation, the mayor told her that she was suspected. Emma chimed in, “We tried to keep it from her as long as we could.”

Robinson’s favorite poses, Boston Globe



On cross-examination, the “foxy” Robinson sought to reframe Lizzie’s response as a study in innocence. Hilliard testified she had said, “I want to know the truth,” and that she was “ready to go at any time.”

“Spoke it right out?” Robinson asked.

Hilliard agreed.

“Earnestly?” Robinson wondered.

Hilliard agreed.

Robinson added, “Frankly?”

Hilliard again agreed.

“Sure about that?” asked Robinson.

“Yes,” he admitted.

Mayor John Coughlin, the next witness, was less obliging. Howard lauded Mayor Coughlin as a “pleasant-faced, courteous-mannered individual” who was both “a square political and surgeon of repute.” After testifying about the conversation on Saturday, August 6, he, unlike Hilliard, resisted Robinson’s repeated attempts to present Lizzie’s response in a positive light. Robinson asked him if Lizzie “spoke up . . . earnestly.”

Coughlin finally answered, “I would not say she did not speak earnestly.” Learning of the crowd that threatened John Morse on Friday, August 5, Coughlin accompanied Marshal Hilliard to the Borden house on the evening of Saturday, August 6, to advise the family not to leave the house. Coughlin asked Lizzie “where she went to after leaving her father.” Lizzie told him that she had gone to the barn for about twenty minutes to look for lead (to make sinkers). Coughlin assured the family: “If you are disturbed in any way, or if you are annoyed by the crowds upon the street . . . I shall see that you receive all the protection that the police department can afford.” Based on “the mayor’s manner and words,” Howard concluded that, despite his own penchant for conspiracy theories, “nothing occurred at the time of his visit which could in any way reflect against” him or even Hilliard.