The Trial of Lizzie Borden(87)

Part 3


VERDICT





Chapter 11


THE OLD PLACE





Lizzie Borden on piazza in Newport, circa 1893, courtesy of Fall River Historical Society



Lizzie Borden’s acquittal on June 20, 1893, was heralded throughout the country as confirmation of her obvious innocence. Invoking the Salem witch trials two hundred years earlier, Julian Ralph wrote: “The suspected witch was in the dock, the fagots had been piled all around her . . . and the hard-headed District Attorney was flourishing an unlighted torch before the audience. But it took only an hour for the jury to decide that witches are out of fashion in Massachusetts and no one is to be executed there on suspicion and on parrot-like police testimony.” Less dramatically but with similar passion, the New York Times declared: “The acquittal of the most unfortunate and cruelly persecuted woman was, by this promptness . . . a condemnation of the police authorities and of the legal officers who secured the indictment and have conducted the trial. It was a declaration, not only that the prisoner was guiltless, but that there never was any serious reason to suppose that she was guilty . . . Her acquittal is only a partial atonement for the wrong that she has suffered.”

The Borden jury, courtesy of Fall River Historical Society



Lizzie Borden’s own first thoughts were of home. Joe Howard heard her declare to her sister: “I want to go home; take me straight home tonight . . . I want to see the old place and settle down at once.” After leaving the courtroom, Lizzie packed up her belongings from her cell before beginning the hour-long trip to Fall River by carriage. A crowd gathered in front of the Second Street house. By nightfall, two thousand people waited to welcome the former prisoner home. But Lizzie was instead taken to spend a quiet night at the home of Charles and Marianna Holmes on Pine Street. There, the former prisoner answered letters from well-wishers far and wide: “Telegrams of congratulation are also arriving, and for some days at least Lizzie Borden will be a very busy correspondent.” One of the jurors brought Lizzie Borden a photograph of the group, for which they had posed after the verdict. Contrary to the press rumors of “crankiness” among the men, they were, in the words of one of their number, “a jolly crowd” and met annually for at least a decade after the trial. Lizzie wrote each a personal letter, lauding them as her “faithful friends and deliver[ers].”

Some speculated that Lizzie and her sister would move to New York City or somewhere in Europe, change their names, and live out their lives in comfortable anonymity. Those closer to her rejected that notion. Robinson told reporters: “She said she had no other place she cared to go but to Fall River.” Besides, as Mary Livermore, one of her most prominent defenders, argued: “No matter where she goes, the news of the tragedies will precede or follow her. If she remains in Fall River, people must be persuaded eventually by her own conduct and character that she is one of the most estimable and most unjustly suspected women in the world.”

But in Fall River public sympathy for Lizzie Borden quickly plummeted. The working classes were never on her side. People gathered on street corners to discuss the verdict, expressing “surprise, bordering on indignation.” “The line,” Julian Ralph observed, was “drawn between rich and poor over her case.” But the members of the elite who had protected her during the ordeal cooled in their enthusiasm after her acquittal and eventually shut her out. Her circle of acquaintances shrank. She discovered she was no longer welcome at the Central Congregational Church, in whose good works she had spent so much of her time. When she attended the service on Sunday, July 23, she sat surrounded by empty pews. The next month saw the publication of The Fall River Tragedy: A History of the Borden Murders by Edwin Porter, the reporter for the Fall River Daily Globe who first published Matron Reagan’s story about the sisters’ jailhouse quarrel. It was mostly a compilation of Porter’s articles for the Globe, but it included an unwelcome amount of detail about the official case against Lizzie Borden from the preliminary hearing to the grand jury. Andrew Jennings had promised that “Lizzie and her sister will leave no stone unturned to discover . . . who the real murderer is.” Porter’s book was a reminder that there were still no other suspects. Much later, Lizzie told a friend that she had her own suspicion about the murderer, but, as she knew well what it was like to be falsely accused, she would not state her opinion.

Lizzie was expected to live down her notoriety. Joe Howard confidently predicted: “She will lead her old life.” Instead, she moved on and up. At the end of an impassioned plea for his client, former governor Robinson had asked the court to acquit her so “that she may go and be Lizzie Andrew Borden of Fall River in that bloodstained and wrecked home where she has passed her life so many years.” She and Emma promptly vacated the “bloodstained and wrecked home” on Second Street and moved to a larger and more expensive home on French Street, at the top of the Hill district, the city’s elite residential area. (They did not sell the old house; they were Andrew Borden’s daughters and understood the value of a good investment property.) Lizzie named the new house “Maplecroft” and, as if that were not sufficiently tactless, had the name chiseled onto the granite steps she added during a renovation. There was something grasping and a little vulgar about the gesture. Naming houses in Fall River was unusual, and generally reserved for the mansions of Fall River’s most august residents like the philanthropist Sarah Brayton, who owned a brick Gothic pile named Broadview, or Colonel Spencer Borden, whose estate on North Watuppa Pond, some distance from the city, was known as Interlachen. Neither required a sign or other marker to announce the name.