The Trial of Lizzie Borden(7)

As they searched for clues, the police also looked closely at the victims. They wondered how a quiet elderly couple could have provoked such murderous hatred. What they would find would be almost as unsettling as the crime itself.





SPINDLE CITY




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In 1892, Fall River was the third-largest city in Massachusetts and its most important center for textile production. Connected to New York and Boston by regular shipping lines, Fall River benefited from its communication with these major urban centers of commerce. But, at its core, “the Manchester of America” remained a mill town. Like many such towns, Fall River was divided into restrictive social groups based upon class, ethnicity, and religion. The elite derived their status from their Yankee heritage, their Congregationalism or other Protestantism, and their ownership of the mills. Foremost among the Protestant elite were the Bordens, the Durfees, and the Braytons. In fact, until 1813, the members of the Borden family owned the water power of the Quequechan River flowing into and under the city, a title particularly important in a mill town. Through marriages and business arrangements, the leading families of Fall River preserved their control and cemented their status. That status, in turn, contributed to a self-regarding provincialism that proved difficult to dislodge. Outsiders who married into the local elite struggled with the unwritten sumptuary rules: for example, Detroit heiress Mary Newcomb learned to her chagrin that her Paris trousseau was “much too dressy for Fall River” and, on the advice of a helpful matron, put her dresses à la mode into storage to “age.”

Fall River as seen from Mt. Hope Bay, circa 1891, courtesy of Fall River Historical Society



Large influxes of immigrants into Fall River—mostly Irish Catholics, French Canadians, and Portuguese—altered the composition of the city in the course of the nineteenth century. These recent arrivals in Fall River found employment in the textile mills or in allied industries. Although native-born Americans had toiled in the mills early in the century, by the 1890s nearly all the men and women who worked there were immigrants. At the beginning of the century, mill work was not considered demeaning to native-born workers, especially women who wanted to earn extra money for a dowry. In fact, in 1817, Hannah Borden, the daughter of a mill stockholder, was singled out as a particularly valued employee. With the arrival of foreign labor and the rise of more restrictive attitudes about the proper role of women—so long as they were middle-class and native-born—earning extra pin money in this fashion ceased to be an option. Under the immigration law of July 1864, corporations could literally import workers and withhold a percentage of their wages for the first year in order to defray the costs of their passage. Even before such legislation was enacted, Irish-Catholic and English immigrants made up the majority of workers in the textile mills by 1850. By 1885, French Canadians were the most important single ethnic group employed in the region’s textile industry. Other immigrants, particularly Irish women like the twenty-six-year-old Bridget Sullivan, entered domestic service. But in exchange for better housing (and a wage of between two dollars and six dollars per week), Bridget suffered a galling trade-off: the Bordens (with the exception of Abby) called her “Maggie,” the name of their previous domestic servant, rather than learning her name.

Each of the city’s social groups inhabited distinct geographic sectors. The segmentation into ethnic ghettos paralleled the pattern of settlement in other industrial New England towns of the same period. But, unlike such towns, the odd topography of the waterfront town mirrored its elaborate hierarchy and gradations of influence. Located at the mouth of the Taunton River, where it is joined by the Quequechan River before emptying into Mount Hope Bay, Fall River rises sharply in increments from sea level. South Main Street, less than one-half mile from shore and on the same level as the Borden house, is 119 feet above the mean high-water mark of the Taunton River. In contrast, Highland Avenue, which marks the upper boundary of the city’s elite Hill district, runs from 254 feet to 355 feet above the river. Many of the newly arrived immigrants lived closest to the water and the mills. Slightly higher in altitude were the more established Irish and lesser Protestants who lived in the flats on roughly the same level as South Main Street. Their homes ranged from tenements to modest single-family houses like the Bordens’ home on Second Street. Lizzie Borden lived on the same plane as the middle-class Irish of the “flats” around the business district, far beneath her Borden cousins who lived on “the Hill.” The location, like the house, suited Andrew, but his daughters would have preferred a more fashionable address.

View of Second Street looking south (Borden house is the second house on the left), courtesy of Fall River Historical Society



View of Second Street looking north (Borden house is the second house on the right), courtesy of Fall River Historical Society



Though the Yankee mill and banking families effectively owned Fall River through the early twentieth century, the newer arrivals constituted an important political force when they voted as a bloc—composing a voting majority by the 1890s—and an important economic power when they organized into unions. For over two-thirds of the nineteenth century, only prominent Yankees, like Adelaide Churchill’s father, were elected to public office in Fall River. However, in the late 1880s, the first Catholic mayor, John W. Cummings, was elected and a Catholic physician, John W. Coughlin, held the office from 1890 to 1894, and therefore had the unenviable task of informing Lizzie Borden of the police department’s suspicion about her story. His sister Annie’s marriage to Hugo Dubuque, a leader of the French Canadian community, helped join the Irish and French Canadians into an effective Democratic voting bloc. Significantly, the Irish Democratic political ascendancy did not change the unwritten social rules. Although Lizzie Borden received the condolences of the Catholic physician and mayor, John W. Coughlin, none of her family had ever interacted socially with their Catholic neighbors, Dr. and Mrs. Kelly or Dr. and Mrs. Chagnon and daughter Marthe. Upon discovering her father’s body, Lizzie Borden sent Bridget to find Dr. Bowen, who was not at home. Bridget left word with Dr. Bowen’s wife that he was needed urgently at the Borden house. It apparently never occurred to either of the women to summon the neighboring Dr. Kelly or Dr. Chagnon. Instead, Lizzie Borden waited inside the screen door for the uncertain arrival of Protestant medical assistance.