The Fall River Tragedy: A History of the Borden Murders

May it Please Your Honors, Mr. Foreman and Gentlemen—One of the most dastardly and diabolical of crimes that was ever committed in Massachusetts was perpetrated in August, 1892, in the city of Fall River. The enormity of it startled everybody, and set all into diligent inquiry as to the perpetrator of such terrible acts. Our society is so constituted, gentlemen, that every man feels that the right must be done and the wrong punished and the wicked doer brought to his account as promptly as due procedure of law will permit. Here, then, was a crime with all its horrors, and well may those who stood first to look at the victims have felt sickened and distressed at heart, and human nature be broken so that the experience of a lifetime will never bring other such pictures. “Who could have done such an act?” says everybody. In the quiet of home, in the broad light of an August day, upon a street of a populous city, with houses within a stone’s throw, nay, almost within touch, who could have done it? Inspection of the victims disclosed that Mrs. Borden had been slain by the use of some sharp and terrible instrument, inflicting upon her head eighteen blows, thirteen of them crushing through the skull; and below, lying upon the sofa, was Mr. Borden’s dead and mutilated body, with eleven strokes upon the head, four of them crushing the skull. The terrors of those scenes no language can portray. The horrors of that moment we can all fail to describe. And so we are charged at once, at the outset, to find somebody that is equal to that enormity, whose heart is blackened with depravity, whose whole life is a tissue of crime, whose past is a prophecy of that present. A maniac or fiend we say. Not a man in his senses and who has heart right, but one of those abnormal productions that deity creates or suffers, a lunatic or a devil. So do we measure the degree of character or want of it, that could possibly prompt a human being to such acts. They were well-directed blows. They were not the result of blundering. They were aimed steadily and constantly for a purpose, each one finding its place where it was aimed, and none going amiss on the one side or the other. Surely we are prompted to say at the outset that the perpetrator of that act knew how to handle the instrument, was experienced in its control, had directed it before or others like it, and it was not the sudden, untrained doing of somebody who had been unfamiliar with such implements. Now, suspicion began to fall here and there. Everybody about there was called to account so far as could be. That is proper. That is right and necessary. Investigation proceeds. The police intervene. They form their theories. They proceed to act. They concern this one and that one. They follow out this and that clew. They are human only. When once a theory possesses our minds you know how tenaciously it holds the place, and how slow the mind is to find lodgment in something else. Now, no decent man complains of investigation. No one says there ought not to have been anything done. Everything ought to have been done. Nay, more, we say everything was not done and that the proper pursuit was not taken. Now, proceed with this matter a little and let us see how it stands. A person is charged with a crime, like this defendant, suspicions surround her, investigations in regard to her proceed, and inevitably, naturally, if the matter is deemed of consequence, she is brought before the court, the district court in that instance, to have an examination preliminary into the probabilities of the crime on her part. Then if she, having nothing to do with it, having no control of it, having no opportunity to accept, to be heard, be bound and compelled to answer to this court, what then? Then the grand jury of the county is called together and sits by itself under the direction of the district attorney, to investigate and see whether it ought to come before a jury like yourselves. Now remember that at that time, and when this indictment of last December was framed, this defendant had no voice, it was purely one sided. They said, “We make this charge, serious as it is, against the defendant. We will ask her to come to the Bristol county court house and meet that charge, and if we cannot prove it against her in the ordinary way she shall go free: she is not guilty.”

Now, that is one sided up to that point, practically, and so you are to draw no inference whatever, and I know you will not; you will draw no inference whatever as against this defendant until you have heard the evidence in this case, in this court room, at this time. You have nothing to do with what was done in Fall River any more than you have with what is now proceeding in Australia. The finding of Judge Blaisdell of the district court in Fall River, worthy man as he may be, is of no sort of consequence here, and has no sort of influence or obligation over you. We would not be safe if in these great crises our lives hung upon the decision of a single man in a prejudiced and excited community. No, we walk away from Fall River, we come down to the broad seashore, we sniff the breezes of the sea, and here is freedom, here is right, here are you, gentlemen. I say, then, at the outset, as you begin to contemplate this crime and its possible perpetration by the defendant, you must conclude at the outset that such acts as those are morally and physically impossible for this young woman defendant. To foully murder her stepmother, and then go straightway and slay her own father is a wreck of human morals; it is a contradiction of her physical capacity and her character. Now, before I pass, let me say that this defendant complains of no prosecution on the part of the district attorney of this district. He has only one duty, and that is, as a gentleman and lawyer, to conduct this investigation so that the truth as to her may be elicited. With his well-earned reputation and his high standing at the bar he would have no need to search for laurels for his fame, and he is one of the last men that would demean himself so as even to think of it. He stands above the miserable assertions that unthinking people will make, and he walks into this court room only as the representative of the commonwealth of Massachusetts, that is, yours and mine and his, and says: Gentlemen, all I have to show you is the case we have against this woman. And if the case I have brought to me by the Fall River police is not sufficient, or you have any doubt about it, he will say, if he speaks what his heart prompts him to utter, he will say, “For God’s sake, say so, like men, and Bristol county will be the happier and the securer afterward.” He is not here for blood, neither is he helped to such dishonorable work, if it were attempted, by our excellent friend, the district attorney from the great county of Essex, one of our best and most reliable lawyers. So you will see no small play, you will see no mean tactics on the part of the commonwealth here, but only a presentation not overstrained in one jot or one tittle, a presentation of what has been proven here, and only that. So merciful is our provision of the law that a defendant shall have a decent chance that she becomes convinced how faithfully that is carried out when she recalls the numerous kindnesses and considerations on the part of the sheriff of this county. He has done with her, not as a convicted criminal, but as a young woman of his county, entitled to her rights, guaranteed to her in the constitution and laws of our State. And so she comes into this court, presided over by our best of the judiciary, clean, able, honorable gentlemen, who sit vigilantly upon the bench to guard against any possible wrong, who want the commonwealth’s case tried, but the defendant to pass without abuse or wrong, and taking the law into your hands as they will give it to you, you have only to deal with the facts. I said the case was brought to the district attorney by the Fall River police. I have not time to go into sarcasm or denunciation of those gentlemen. They are like a great many bodies of police that you find in all communities. Policemen are human, made out of men, and nothing else, and the blue coat and the brass buttons only cover the kind of a man that is inside. And you do not get the greatest ability in the world inside a policeman’s coat. You may perhaps get what you want, and what is sufficient, but you must only call upon him for such services as he can render. Now, when a police officer undertakes to investigate a crime, he is possessed and saturated with the thoughts and experiences he has with bad people. He is drifting and turning in the way of finding a criminal, magnifying this, minimizing that, throwing himself on this side in order to catch somebody, standing before a community that demands the detection and punishment of the criminal, blamed if he does not get somebody into the lockup before morning. “What are the police doing?” says the newspaper, and the newspapers, you know, are not always right, mostly. Saying to him: “Look here, Mr. Marshal, these murders were committed yesterday and we haven’t a murderer in the lockup. Get somebody in.” Now they are sensitive to all those expressions. Naturally policemen, feeling the responsibility of their office, must go there and do just such work as that, in that way. That can only be expected of them. And when they come upon the witness stand they reveal their weakness, do they not? They knock their own heads together. They make themselves, as a body of men, ridiculous, insisting that a defendant shall know everything that was done on a particular time, shall account for every moment of that time, shall tell it three or four times alike, shall never waver or quiver, shall have tears, or not have tears, shall make no mistakes. But they, stripped of their blue clothes, and in their citizens’ garb, show themselves to be only men here, and liable to human infirmities and errors. Now I dismiss them without any unpleasant reflection. I will talk about them a little later on: but I have nothing to say now, any more than this, that you must not ask of them more than they ought to give, you must not be surprised that they fail even of the standard that they set up for everybody else. So I say to you, as a distinguished advocate in a similar cause expressed himself to the jury: This defendant comes before you perfectly satisfied that the jury is the most refreshing prospect in the eye of accused innocence ever met in human tribunal. Who are you twelve men, and how came you here? Selected out of one hundred and fifty men that were drawn from the body of this county, passing the gauntlet of criticism and objections put upon you by the court or the attorneys, you are sworn here in this cause. Who are you? Men: Bristol county men. Men with hearts and men with heads, with souls, and men with rights. You come here in obedience to the laws that we prescribe for the orderly administration of our courts. You come here because, in answer to the demand, you feel that you must render this great service, unpleasant and trying as it may be, exhaustive as are its labors; you come here because you are loyal men to the State. Nay, more. You are out of families, you come from firesides, you are members of households, you have wives and daughters and sisters and you have had mothers, you recognize the bond that unites and the flash that plays throughout the households. Now bring your hearts and your homes and your intellects here and let us talk to you as men, not as unmeaning things.

The clerk swore you to your duty, and perhaps you did not hear that oath so closely as I did. But I heard him say, “You shall well and truly try and true deliverance make between the commonwealth and the defendant, whom you shall have in charge.” In no case except a capital case is the oath offered in that way—“whom you shall have in charge.” And Lizzie Andrew Borden from the days when we opened this trial until this hour, has been in your charge, gentlemen. That is the oath you took. And not alone with you, Mr. Foreman, or any one of you, but with each and all of you. You have her in charge. Now has come the time when not alone her lawyers are to speak for her, not alone the judges are to watch for protection, not alone is the learned attorney of the commonwealth to ask no more than he ought to have, but the twelve men who sit here to try this question take the woman in this charge, and the commonwealth says, “We intrust her to you.” Now that is your duty. She is not a horse, she is not a house, she is not a parcel of land, she is not the property of anybody, but she is a free, intelligent, thinking, innocent woman, in your charge. I noticed one day as we were proceeding with this trial, a little scene that struck me forcibly. It was one morning as the court was about to open, when you were coming into your seats and standing there and the judges were passing to the bench to take their positions and the defendant was asked to pass around from the place where she now sits in order that she might come in so as to be near her counsel, and right at that moment of transition she stood here waiting between the court and the jury; and waited in her quietness and calmness until it was time for her properly to come forward. It flashed through my mind in a minute; there she stands protected, watched over, kept in charge by the judges of this court and by the jury who have her in charge.

If the little sparrow does not fall unnoticed to the ground, indeed, in God’s great providence this woman has not been alone in this court room, but ever shielded by his providence from above and by the sympathy and watchful care of those who have her to look after. You are trying a capital case, a case that involves a human life, a verdict in which against her calls for the imposition of but one penalty, and that is that she shall walk to her death. You are then to say, “I will critically consider this question, and I will make no mistake, because if I do, no power on earth or in heaven can right the wrong.” You come here without prejudice or bias, I take it. You said you did. I believed you. I believe you now. You said that though you might have read about this transaction, you might have formed an opinion, might have expressed an opinion, as I think some of you with perfect honesty said, because in this intelligent age people do think and read and talk, and it is all right they should, but when a man is big enough to walk up and say in answer to the questions the chief justice put to him, “I have read and thought and judged about it, and I stand up here now, and before my God and my people, say I will find a true verdict on the evidence under the law.” That is a man we all want to see in the jury box. I would rather see him there than to have one of these miserable pieces of putty on whom the last man who stuck his finger into him can make an impression. You will need at the outset, gentlemen, to dismiss from your minds entirely everything that the press ever said about the case, anything that your neighbors have ever said about it, anything that you have ever heard about it except in this court room at this time. Every rumor, every idle tale or every true tale that has been told you must banish from your minds absolutely and forever. Why, gentlemen, if we were to try the case on the street we need not have spent these days and you would have been enjoying your entire freedom like the rest of us, you would not have been prisoners yourselves. But we are not trying the case in this way. And so certainly, I believe, does the court guard it, that you are shut off from reading the newspapers, from having communications, from indulging in conversation about the case during the progress of the trial. What use in taking these precautions if you are all coming in with your heads brim full of what you have heard before and will not give that up? Now every man of you is man enough to say, when you go to the jury room to deliberate on this thing, and somebody presents an idea. “Well, that is not in this case. You have no right to consider any such thing. You have no more right to do it than you have to take a knife and cut this woman’s throat”—I mean under your duties as prescribed by the law. Then you come here patiently day after day, and you will sit here again and again until this case is concluded, and then proceed with your deliberation with that calmness and fidelity that is guaranteed in the expression of your countenance.

Hear all, weigh all with caution. Now, gentlemen, it is not your business to unravel the mystery. You are not here to find out the solution of that problem. You are not here to find out the murderer. You are not here to pursue anything else. You are simply and solely here to say, is this woman defendant guilty? That is all, and though the real criminal shall never be found, better a million times that than you find a verdict against this woman upon insufficient evidence and against your human experience and contrary to the law, so that an unhealthy appetite may be satisfied, and blood be given that belongs to the owner of it beyond anybody’s taking. Not who is it? Not how could it have been done? Did she do it? That is all. Reflect if you have not yet been able to bring that evidence with a certainty and a reasonable construction to a conclusion, so that you, as decent gentlemen, can go to your homes and sit down and say, “We have done our whole duty. We have brought in a verdict against her,” although perhaps, within a week we wish we had not, when we think of it. Nor must you think for a moment that this defendant is set to the business of finding out who did it. If she cannot find out and tell you who perpetrated these acts, somebody says, “Go hang her.” She is not a detective, and the commonwealth has put her in a place for the last ten months so she could not be very vigilant or active if she had all the ability in the world. She has been in jail in this county; she has been under control of the police from the very time, from Thursday, August 4, as you know from all these facts, and do not expect her to do things that are impossible. Pray, do not load upon her the responsibility of setting her to go when she cannot go, or do what she cannot do, or else hold her to account for it with the severest penalty known in the law. The commonwealth does not want any victim, either. In the old days they had sacrifices of lambs and goats, and even human beings were offered in expiation and in sacrifice. But we have got over all that. We do not even burn witches now in Massachusetts. The commonwealth wants no victim, and so, gentlemen, I have attempted in this way to array before you what I consider, in my own manner, the duties that lie upon you and the limitations under which you act. And what is the call upon you? Why, simply to be true to yourselves. “To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.” Now there always goes with any person the presumption of innocence of crime. I stand here at this moment addressing you, and I am clad all over with that presumption of innocence of every crime; so is each one of you. That is your bulwark; that is born with you, nay, rather is given to you out of the great consent of all the people, and you say “guilty?” Why I think not. I am innocent, and the court will tell you that that presumption started with this prisoner on August 4, and has been with her by night and by day. When you had her in charge that presumption of innocence has been in her favor and it never leaves her until by the verdict of a jury that presumption is overcome and she is declared guilty.

It is true that people who have heretofore been innocent commit crime, and so the law says, “We will not demand the unreasonable and impossible thing, but you, the defendant, shall have that presumption go with you until it is entirely overturned and it says that you are of a criminal heart and criminal act.” Now, bear that in mind, if it comes to any question in the discussion of the evidence of a doubtful consideration, then that presumption is all the time in the scale. The beam of the scale does not stand level to start with. We say the scales of justice hang even, but there is always with the defendant the presumption of innocence that tips the scale in her favor, and the commonwealth must begin and load in on the other side facts until they shall overcome the presumption—nay, more, and overbalance the facts that the defendant shall produce.

I shall not attempt to talk to you at length about the different kinds of evidence, direct evidence and circumstantial evidence. The learned court will explain those different features to you, and the lines have been drawn so clearly in the many cases that have been tried that it is wholly unnecessary for me to take your time and your patience. You know, or will know, when his honor has uttered to you the charge in the best way what we mean by direct evidence, and what we mean by circumstantial evidence. Direct evidence, testimony from actual observation and actual knowledge, is what we very frequently rely upon. But that is not always certain. I am bound to say to you, not always sure, because the man who gives the direct evidence may be a miserable liar and you would not believe him under oath unless you kept your hand on him. Now, that is direct evidence and then sometimes facts are found out by circumstances. You reason from hearing a noise or from seeing a person in a given place. You see a man going somewhere and you say he has gone in there for that particular business there, whether it is banking or insurance or grocery. Well, you may be right or you may be wrong. You have been given different circumstances to try to draw out a reasonable conclusion, but I am not going to enlarge upon that because I deem it unnecessary and because I have other things in my mind which are more important. You do not start in here to try to convict anybody—other people may, but you do not. If you are asked to convict upon any evidence, whether that is direct or circumstantial, you will, of course, bring it your clearest perception and strict honesty, and look to see whether it fits in, whether it is all right, and whether it has not run against this corner and also knocked itself to pieces, whether the circumstances are all in and whether something has not been left out, whether the chain is not broken with which it is sought to bind the defendant. Look it over, search it through and through, as I will in the argument as I proceed, and discover whether there is any claim that is insufficiently proved. Then, too, the court will tell you that by whichever method you proceed as to this defendant, the proof must come up in your mind as a moral certainty—not a mathematical certainty, but a moral certainty. It must be beyond a reasonable doubt.

Now, you saw in criminal cases before—very likely you have had a man before you on trial who had stolen five dollars or something of that kind, and the same rule applies. And you are told that you must not convict him unless you are satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt. It is not different in this case. In the one case you are perhaps dealing with a man who will be subjected to a penalty of a fine, or a brief imprisonment at the most. Here the same rule applies, and you are dealing with a woman, whose life is at stake, and nothing else. Now, you will see that while the rule of law is the same in the one case as in the other, the magnitude of a mistake about it is not to be lightly considered. So that when you are asked to find these essential facts beyond a reasonable doubt of a curmudgeon who sits off in a corner and says, “I won’t talk with anybody; I am an ugly fellow: I will make myself disagreeable in this jury room,” that is not it. That is not a reasonable doubt, no matter which side he is on. He is not fit for service in the jury room. It is the doubt of such men as I take you to be, with your home influences, with your church belongings, with your business associations, with your social relations, with all that binds you up to each of us.

It is the reasonable doubt of a reasonable man, confronted with the greatest crisis he has ever met in the world. Yes, the greatest crisis; because, though I doubt not some of you have worn the blue and faced the cannon shot, though you may have heard and felt the thunders of war, and you may have seen blood flow in streams, yet that is one thing; this—to sit here and to have in charge this young woman and to say upon your oaths you are satisfied that she is guilty or not guilty, is a duty to which very likely none of you have ever been called, and which probably you will never be asked to perform again. You will go to your graves thinking of how you performed this task, and it ought not to be that you can have any compunctions that you made a mistake which nobody could retrieve. Then again, under the laws of this State, the defendant in a criminal case is permitted to testify upon the stand as she desires to, but if she does not desire to she can refrain from testifying, and then the statute says, specifically and directly, no inference shall be drawn against her from the fact that she has not testified. And so the learned district attorney in his closing argument will not by the slightest suggestion or insinuation insult this court and jury by intimating that the defendant ought to have testified. That law was born under two considerations. Formerly the defendant could not testify. Later it seemed to be wise to give a defendant an opportunity to testify, but it says at once, although he does not come to the stand, you shall not take that against him in any way. And again, too, as if in the charity of human nature our law givers felt that it was too great a strain oftentimes to put upon a defendant to place him in such a position that he must either go upon the stand or have that argument laid against him, that he ought to have done it, the law which I have cited to you—not in its exact term, but in its essential features and expressions—was framed in the way I have stated. And I dismiss that again. The court will tell you in emphatic and clear language, and it will look you in the eye, and touching your sense of justice, say to you: Gentlemen, you must not consider that, and you will not as you go to yonder room under your oath depart from that, because if you do so what is the use in having scales for justice to hold or courts for the apparent administration of it either. Now I said you must leave out rumors, reports, statements which you have heard before the trial commenced. That is true. I repeat it; but more, you must leave out of your minds absolutely every single thing that the learned gentleman who opened this case, Mr. Moody, said that he was going to prove, unless he has actually proven it. Now I would not like to say that about him in private affairs. I would not be pleased to intimate to you that he would say anything that he was not going to do, because he is the soul of honor. But he speaks for the commonwealth, that is all, and the commonwealth tells him: “You must not say anything but what you are going to do and you must tell them that and that only.” And I shall expect the learned district attorney to withdraw the things that brother Moody said he was going to prove, because he has not proved them. The court room ought not to echo still with the utterances of the gentleman who opened this case, because they tend to create a prejudice against the defendant. Now let us tell you about that so that you will understand it. Mr. Moody said that the government was going to claim and prove that this defendant was preparing a dangerous weapon on August 3, the day before the murder. You heard him say that. I did. He said it. They have not proved it, have they? Was there a thing about it in the evidence? You have heard some discussion that we have had at the bar because, in order that there should be no prejudice, you have been asked to stop. Many of those things which have been offered in good faith have not been proved, because the court has said that they are not proper to be proved in this case. They have nothing to do with it. They will only mislead the jury, and the jury shall not hear them in this case. Whenever another case arises, if these things are pertinent and proper they shall be heard, but not now. No, the commonwealth came with the idea of putting these things before you, I say, with good intention, but the court says, “No, though your intention is good, it is not proper, and we will not complicate this thing. It will create a bias against the prisoner which may divert the course of justice, and that shall not be introduced here: it has no right here though you mean to be right.” Now, there is no proof at all, gentlemen, about any dangerous weapon having been prepared upon the 3d of August. And to make it more specific, Mr. Moody said in his opening that they would prove that this young woman went out to buy a poison on August 3. You have not heard any such evidence. It is not proved: the court did not allow it to be proved, and it is not in the case. Now you will not go to the jury room with the thought that if it had been allowed you would have considered that it was proven. But it is not allowed: no such evidence came before you, and I shall expect the district attorney, man fashion, to get up and say so, and I think you will, and I shall be disappointed in him if he does not. He will tell you that upon that subject, and that the case is not touched at all. Then he said that they were going to show you that the defendant had contradicted herself under oath about these occurrences. Well, there is another question which went to the court, and the court said: “That is not proper in this case. You cannot show that.” And so there is nothing of the kind. Now, are you not going to sit back there and say, “Well, I rather think Mr. Knowlton and Mr. Moody would not have offered it unless there is something behind it.” That is not the way to try cases. That is not the way you hold this defendant in charge. You might just as well have got your verdict before you started, and said, “Guilty, because she is here.” You might as well say, “We don’t want to hear any evidence.” You do not want to say that you do not care whether you hang her right or wrong,—“give us somebody.” Now, the court sits here to guard you and all of us against any such mistake. That will not do. The court says: “Here, gentlemen, decide this case on the evidence given right here from the witness stand and on nothing else.” When you stand there in the box ready to answer, and somebody says to you, “O, don’t mind what they put in about particular evidence, whether competent or incompetent,” you say, “No, I want my rights. I am here under the protection of the law, and I call upon these twelve men, decent men, under their oaths, to stand by me and see that I am not wronged.” So you will leave those things out, gentlemen. No prussic acid, no preparation of a weapon by this woman, no statement made by her under oath in this trial, or anywhere that you know anything about or have a right to consider—I do not care what you have read. Now, we shall agree in the consideration of this case very largely upon many things. My position in this case, in speaking for the defendant, is not to misrepresent or distort facts, but to take the proofs as they are, put them against each other and find out what is right. This defendant wants nothing but justice, and she desires to have it in the proper administration of the law. Things that are not in dispute I hope I shall not contest. I hope I shall array before you the facts altogether in an intelligent and clear way, and then ask you to give me your judgment on them by and by, and I just as sincerely trust that I will not, even by a single letter, step over the line of the proof or deal unjustly, even with the commonwealth that is really so dear to us all. Now, let us see if we cannot get at these things in a fair way without prejudice.

Mr. Andrew J. Borden left his house and went down street that morning, Thursday, August 4, about 9:30 o’clock, so that he arrived at the Savings Bank, upon the evidence, about 9:30. He went into several places along the street, not material now to consider, walked back along South Main street toward his house, stopped at a store of his that was being repaired, talked with Shortsleeves and Mr. Mather, and after picking up an old block, which he wrapped up in paper and took home, he started to go to his house. You recollect something was said that it is not material to consider in this connection, but he walked along up toward his house, arriving there, the defendant thinks, about 10:45. It did not vary, probably, more than two, or possibly three minutes from that time. It must have been as much as that because you recollect how Mr. Mather put it, his looking at the clock and the time that Mr. Borden lingered at the store, went upstairs, came down, went out into the middle of the street, went back and talked with Mather and Shortsleeves a minute or two and then went on. It was 10:40, twenty minutes of 11, as he came up to the store. Now he probably consumed two or three or four minutes in doing those things that they have spoken of, and so you may well, perhaps, infer that he reached his house about 10:45. We have learned of several things that he did, that he came into the house, sat down, went upstairs to his room, laid down his little package, and so on, was occupied with a few things that would consume a short space of time, so that we can say that he was murdered somewhere within a given fifteen or twenty minutes of time which may be between five minutes of 11 and ten minutes past 11. I presume that the commonwealth will not differ with me about this. At any rate, if there is a clearer statement of it to be made, the defendant has no objection if it lies within the proofs. That is the way I propose to argue, to take that as a fact. Mrs. Borden had died earlier. On the testimony of the physicians, inspecting the character of the wounds, the condition of the blood, the state of the stomachs and the intestines, they put it from an hour to an hour and a half earlier than he died. That is probably correct. At any rate, no issue is made about it; and so, if I may be permitted to state it, she would seem to have died between 9:45 o’clock and 10:15, somewhere within that half hour, taking all the evidence into account. That answers the demands of the physicians, and seems to me, if I may be permitted to say it, to accord to the facts. Now you have those tragedies within that short space of time in that place, and it is for us to see whether the defendant is connected with them: whether the defendant alone or the defendant with any confederate, if there is any proof about it, did the deed. I am at a loss to know where there is any evidence about any accomplice or anybody else connected with it at all, and so it is only my inquiry to find out if there is any truth as to this defendant. Of course, I need only suggest to you that until there is some sort of evidence that connects somebody with it, it is not well to assume that she must have had somebody, because you cannot think of anything else. That is not the way to try this case. Now it will be my endeavor in discussion of these questions to be very guarded about giving my opinion of the evidence. I have no right to put in whatever personal weight I may have in my construction of the evidence. That is bad practice, and I should expect, if I get over the line, for the learned court to call me to order, because I trust I know my place.

I have no right to tell you that I believe so and so about this case. I may believe all I want to, but my duty is to keep it inside of me, that is all. And so the district attorney will do the same: carrying his great weight and the strength of his convictions every way into this case, he is not so to demean himself as to tell you that he believes so and so. You do not want our beliefs, we want yours and your judgment. Now there sits the defendant. In yonder city were the crimes. Those crimes were the foulest and the darkest kind. She comes here under this presumption of innocence. It must be overcome absolutely and you must bind her up to the acts before you can say she is guilty. What is the cord that holds her to those terrible criminal acts? Let us see where it is to be found. It is not in the charge that is read in the indictment; it is not in the procedure of the court, but it must be in that chain of circumstances or in that line of direct proof that shall show you that she is tied up to this thing, that she is the one, and that it is not reasonable that anybody else did it or could have done it; that there is no reasonable way of accounting for the things that are proved except that she did it. That is the kind of bond that you must frame in order to hold her or to permit you even to think of holding her.

If a person commits a murder like this and we know it, we have no occasion to inquire for what reason he did it. If he did it then it does not make any difference whether he had any motive or not. He might have done it for pure deviltry, without a motive. He may have done it in insanity, and then the law comes in, in another way, to intervene in his behalf. But if it is proved—proved, I say, not guessed, but proved—that he did it, it is not of the slightest importance whether he had a motive or not. If he did it, that is all there is about it. Now, why is the commonwealth bound in this case to attempt to show a motive for doing? merely this, gentlemen, because they say here are the crimes—there are the crimes, there sits the defendant, you see her over there? Now, in order to hold her responsible for the crimes we have got to bind her up to the crimes. We have no direct evidence that puts her there, we have some circumstances that look as if she might get there: and so in order to bring her to it, we must show a reason why she would do it. What moved her to do it, that is the motive, that is to say the motive in this case, is only to explain the evidence. You get my idea I think. It is only to tell you how you can explain her acts or her words. If you can explain them in a reasonable and honorable way she is entitled to that. But if they cannot explain except that you find a criminal thought running through them, then that motive operates against her. Not to make her commit the crime, but to show you that what is said about it is a reasonable construction, that she was led to do it. That is it, if I understand the case properly, and I state it just as I believe it to be—the court will correct me if I am wrong—and I believe I state it about as the commonwealth attorneys would state it, intentionally I do; and so that motive is only to be inquired into to help out about the circumstances, and I think I can explain it to you—and I am guarding myself against saying anything I ought not to. Suppose the crime were committed in another place, and a man was suspected of it, and he proved that he were in the state of Georgia at the time, at the very instant, and everybody knew it. Well, now, you could not bind him for doing the crime anyway, no matter if he stood down there and swore profanely that if he could only get home he would have killed that man. That would not be anything, because the circumstances do not come up to it, they are not connected. So you do not want his motive to explain his acts. He hasn’t any acts to explain. Now, the government says that Miss Lizzie Borden has some acts to explain, therefore they will find out whether there is anything in her motives that will put a color on it. I think you see that, and they are inseparable from the conditions. Now, I say that the argument will be only this, that you are to look at the motive to see what effect you shall give to the evidence. It will not do to say that no adequate motive is shown and none is necessary. That is true when the crime is proved. That is true when you have the facts. But that is not true when you are trying to show the motive in order to explain the facts. Now there is absolutely (and I think the commonwealth will say it) no direct evidence against Miss Borden, the defendant. You know what I mean. Nobody saw or heard anything or experienced anything that connects her with the tragedies. No weapon whatever, and no knowledge of the use of one, as to her, has been shown. You know if you had found her with some weapon of that kind in her control, or in her room, or with her belongings, that would be direct evidence. But there is nothing of that kind. It is not claimed. It is not shown that she ever used an implement of the character that must have produced these murders. It is not shown that she ever touched one, or knew of one, or bought one, or had one. In fact, the evidence is that she did not know where the ordinary things in the house of that kind were.

And the murders did not tell any tales on her either. There was no blood on her, and blood speaks out, although it is voiceless; it speaks out against the criminal. Not a spot on her from her hair to her feet, on her dress or person anywhere. Think of it. Think of it for an instant. Yes, there was one drop of blood on the white skirt as big as the head of the smallest pin, says Prof. Wood. Less than a sixteenth of an inch in diameter; and that is every particle of blood that was found upon her clothing. And that was not where you could expect it to be; not in the front of the skirt that must, if she had it on and had done these foul deeds, have first come in contact, but around back down toward the bottom near the placket, as I believe the women call it, out of the way. I do not know but the government are going to say that she turned her skirt round hind side before, before she began, in order to get at it in a practical way. I don’t know what they are going to say yet. I shall have occasion to speak of that by and by. But Prof. Wood does not claim now—I don’t know as there is a Fall River policeman, from the top down, that claims now—that that little fly speck, as it were, of blood tells any tale here. I forbear to allude to what is proved in this case—Miss Borden’s illness, monthly illness, at that time—and to tell you or remind you that Prof. Wood said he would not undertake to say that that blood was not the menstrual blood. You know the facts. I need not give them in detail. You know enough in your own households; you know all about it. You are men and human. You have your feelings about it. I am not going to drag them up, but you must not lose sight of these things. Then there was some talk about a roll of burned paper in the stove, where Mr. Philip Harrington, I believe, was the officer. He took off the cover and saw what he said looked like the embers of a rolled up piece of paper, burned, that is all. And there was some sort of dark insinuations here floating around that didn’t clothe themselves in words, but there was something in the manner that meanly intimated that Dr. Bowen was doing something about it—Dr. Bowen—I suppose they don’t make any allegation that he committed these murders, or helped to cover up, or assisted in doing anything about it. When the evidence is heard, it seems that Mr. Philip Harrington says that Dr. Bowen was throwing in some pieces of an old letter that had nothing to do with these transactions, something about his own family matters of no account. And Mr. Harrington, I think I am right in the name of the officer, when they were thrown in, saw some little piece of paper, rolled up paper, about an inch in diameter, that had been rolled up and was lying there, the embers of it, and there was a small, low fire. Well, we thought the handle was in there. We thought that was the plan that the government possessed itself with the idea that that handle was rolled up by the defendant in a piece of paper and put down in there to burn; and it had all burned up except the envelope of paper. Did you ever see such a funny fire in the world? What a funny fire that was. A hard stick inside a newspaper and the hardwood stick would go out beyond recall, and the newspaper that lives forever would stay there. What a funny idea; what a theory that is. And we wrestled with that proposition here, on the part of the defense, through weary nights, troubled about it, until Fleet and Mullaly got here together, and then we were relieved from every doubt. For the handle is in it, and it is out of it. Fleet did not see it; Mullaly did see it. Fleet did not take it out of the box, and Mullaly saw him do it. And it is in the box now, and they run over to Fall River to get it, or they wanted to, and can’t get into our house, and explain about it. So we rather think that the handle is still flying in the air, a poor orphan handle without a hatchet, flying around somewhere. For heaven’s sake get the one hundred and twenty-five policemen of Fall River and chase it till they can drive it in somewhere and hitch it up to its family belongings. Then, too, upon the best testimony of the experts, and probably in your own common sense, whoever committed that murder of Mrs. Borden stood astride her body. She was a large, stout, fleshy woman, weighing two hundred pounds. Conceive of the situation. You looked at the place. You saw the little gap between the bureau and the bed, stated to be about thirty to thirty-four inches, and you are to conceive of the murderer standing over the body in this way. Here she lies, there, and the murderer standing over her and literally chopping her head to pieces. I shall have more to say about that by and by, but I call it to your attention. And they all agreed that Mr. Borden was butchered by somebody who stood at the head of the sofa and between that and the parlor door. You know how it is placed and we make no question about it. That looks reasonable, we will say, and so we take the things as they are. Now, what reason is there for saying that this defendant is guilty? The commonwealth asks you to come up here and hear all this evidence and point out whether you think she is guilty or not. If you do not think she is, why, you say, “Not guilty;” and the commonwealth is satisfied, and the district attorney goes away, having done his whole duty, satisfied to let it alone. He does not find any fault about it, he is relieved of it. It is a great relief to him to get rid of the case. He does not enjoy it. He says, come up and hear all we have got against her and let the jury say she is not guilty and that will stop this matter, or if you come up and hear it and you say she is guilty, then that relieves me about it. I put this responsibility on you. And the court says, “I put this woman into your charge.” Now you have got it all. Now what right have they to say anything about it? Well, I want to run it through, which I have done with some care, and tell you why they claim that she did it.

In the first place, they say she was in the house in the forenoon. Well, that may look to you like a very wrong place for her to be in. But it is her home. I suspect you have kind of an impression that it would be a little better for her than it would be out traveling the streets. I don’t know where I would want my daughter to be, at home ordinarily, or where it would speak more for her honor and care, and reflect somewhat of credit upon me and her mother (who is my wife, I want to say), than to say that she was at home, attending to the ordinary vocations of life, as a dutiful member of the household, as belonging there. So I don’t think there is any criminal look about that. She was at home. She is shown to have been upstairs to her room, the government says, about ten minutes before ten, and she must have seen, as they claim, the dead body of Mrs. Borden, as she, the defendant, went up and down the stairs. Now, let us look at that, because that is an important feature in the case, important for the commonwealth, important for the defendant. You went there and saw the situation. You know how the stairs go up, turning around as you go up, and at the top of the landing you are right there at Miss Lizzie’s door. When you stand at the top of the landing you cannot see into the guest chamber, you know. It is as if you stood over there where the officer stands, or a little further. You are not looking into the door at all. It is not like a good many houses where you come up at the top and are looking in at both doors at the same time. Then it is said that at a certain point on the staircase, right on one tread of one stair, if you look in under the bed across the floor of the guest chamber you could see any object that was over between the bed and bureau. And you were all asked to do that by traveling up and traveling down—you remember the experience you had—and looking. And therefore they say that, although Miss Lizzie, when she was at her door as she undertook to pass down, could not see Mrs. Borden over there behind the bed, that if she went downstairs she could have seen Mrs. Borden lying there behind the bed, and, therefore, that she must have seen her. Now if we had marched up and down the stairs and told you nothing of what we wanted you to look at, there is not one of you that would have squinted under that bed on that particular tread of the stairs. You would not have thought of it. But you were going to see if you could see, and you were told to look all you could, and see if you could see. So you got ready to see, and made up your minds that you were going to see if there was anything to see. You have not been home for the last two weeks. But when you get home, and after you get over this in two or three weeks from now, and I meet you, I want you to tell me where you looked when you came down stairs that morning, and whether you looked to see what you could see at any particular stair. How was it the last day you were at home? Do you remember anything about it? What time in the morning did you come down? At what stair did you look to see what you could see? Right in your own house where nothing had happened. Now we are talking of a time with regard to Miss Lizzie when nothing had happened, when everything was all right. It was so at that time as to her. Now people do not go searching and squinting and playing the detective and all that to begin with. I do not. If I did I should think I was a rascal some way or other, and that something was happening to me. If she did that thing, if she was looking to see if anybody could see it, if she walked down and looked under and not said anything about it—there goes the murderess, see her; she didn’t see it, and she might. Therefore she is the criminal. She did see it because she could, and, therefore, she is the criminal. No, no. You and I, until we get to be too old, run up and down stairs just as we have a mind to. They are our stairs. We do not ask anybody’s pardon or qualify our act a particle. Then there is not the slightest evidence that that door was open at that time. Remember that there is evidence that it was open later but no evidence that it was open before Mr. Borden came in. I am right about that, and that is very important. So that if, when Miss Lizzie was down stairs and went upstairs, as she undoubtedly did during that forenoon, to her room, if she went up and down stairs and the door was closed or nearly closed or stood ajar, then, of course, she could not see. She had no occasion to go into that spare room. Wouldn’t go in there. As you know about the habits of the family in which she lived, the spare room was closed up practically. Mrs. Borden had gone there to make the beds, and after she had left it all right, undoubtedly she would push to the door. The door was pushed to, at any rate. There is no evidence that it was wide open. Now the government starts out with the idea that the door was standing wide open, and, therefore, that she could see: and I have told you how you can reason it very plainly out in your own common experience you wouldn’t look. If she had been lying right in front of the bed, outside, why I should have said it would be very improbable that a passer up and down the stairs would not have seen her, and yet that is not impossible. You walk along the streets sometimes, possibly—I do not want to say anything wrong about you—and you meet your own wife and don’t see her, go right along. They used to tell a story about Prof. Peirce over at Cambridge who didn’t know his own wife when he met her, and he had been spoken to about it so much that finally he thought to make amends, he would speak to the first thing he met, and that was a cow. He said “Good morning.” He didn’t make any more mistakes. People are not looking for everything at every minute, especially if they are innocent. It is the guilty man that is always looking around to see when there is somebody round going to catch him, lay hand on him. Now do not ask her to do things that nobody else does. Besides, you remember the testimony from Dr. Bowen and Mr. Manning and some others—it is not necessary to state them—that the upper hall was dark when they went up there, and that the guest chamber was dark. You remember that in that guest chamber there are these tight board shutters that shut up. And you know the New England housewife does not like to have her carpet fade, and the more they live in the old style the more careful they are.

I remember with some reflections about my old mother, how she looked after the carpet and the boys, and they did not get the light in. The boys wanted to live out in the sunlight, and she did not want her carpets there. And so the natural thing in that room in the Borden house was to keep the shutters shut, those tight shutters. And the doctors say, they all of them say, that when they went in it was dark and they had to open them so they could see something. Now you recollect that we tried that on you over there. You marched up and down in the first place, with the shutters all flung open, so that that room was as light as this, or more so. Then we shut the shutters and asked you to go up. You know the instance. You can see across the street, but it is always difficult to look down into a well and see what is at the bottom. Now, they say further, as a reason, that she is guilty, or they claim it, that Mr. Fleet tells you that Lizzie said she saw Mrs. Borden about 9 o’clock, when she, meaning Mrs. Borden, was making the bed. Now, taking that as true, there is no contradiction of it, I am bound to say, however, in fairness to the defendant, that it is possible that Mr. Fleet was mistaken. But it is of no great account, as the defense looks at this case. Admit that, then, for the time being, for this discussion, to be true, I do not say it is, but just assume it. See what it comes to, then: that is, Miss Lizzie said to Mr. Fleet—assume that it is a fact—that as she went down stairs or went upstairs she saw Mrs. Borden making the bed in the spare room. Well, what of it? what of it? True, you say. Your daughter goes upstairs this morning to her room and she sees her mother in the spare room making the bed. Well, what of it? Well, they say she was upstairs when Mrs. Borden was making the bed. That is true. But she was upstairs in her own house, in her own room, at a time when the orderly woman of a house goes to look after the morning work. It does not appear one way or the other whether they were in conversation or not, and it does not appear whether she went up and down stairs that morning two or three or more times or not. Why, you would naturally infer, I should say, that it would be the commonest thing in the world for this young woman to pass up and down stairs to her room in the ordinary way of living? Why not? Do you suppose that your wives and daughters can tell the number of times they went up and down stairs six months ago on a given day? Not at all, or even the day before, unless they were very careful about something. Now, there is no doubt at all in my mind that she did go up and down stairs. Mrs. Borden was making the bed. That was before she had been killed, of course. And while she was there, pursuing that work, nothing whatever except the passing up and down is what is claimed here. Now, grant it all. Grant that she did go up and down stairs that morning about 9 o’clock. Mrs. Borden was alive. It is not claimed that she killed them at that time. But the commonwealth undertakes to tell you without any evidence, gentlemen, without any evidence that she stayed up there that forenoon, practically, until her father came in. I say there is no evidence of it, and I will show you that later. That she went up and down I do not care to question. I should expect it. That she stayed up, no; or that she was there, having stayed all the time until her father came, no. Now, she told about the note, they say, and that is evidence of guilt. She told about Mrs. Borden having a note. Now, there is considerable interest in that question, and I ask your attention to it. You know that after the tragedies, when Miss Lizzie was asked about where Mrs. Borden was, she told Bridget, so Bridget tells us, that Mrs. Borden had a note and had gone out. I said: “Who is sick?” “I don’t know; she had a note this morning; it must be in town.” Now, that is what Bridget said to Mrs. Churchill and she says: “I said,” meaning herself, “I said, ‘where is your mother?’ She said, ‘I don’t know: she’s just had a note to see some one who is sick.’” Next question: listen to it. “What did Bridget tell about Mrs. Borden having a note?” and, “She said Mrs. Borden had a note to go and see some one that was sick, and she was dusting the sitting room, and she hurried off and said she didn’t tell me where she was going: she generally does.” Now, that is what Bridget told Mrs. Churchill. You get the idea. Both Bridget and Lizzie had learned from Mrs. Borden that she had had a note. Mrs. Borden had told Lizzie. Mrs. Borden had told Bridget. She had given Bridget the work to do, washing the windows. She says to her: “I have got a note to go out and see some one that was sick.” That was when she was dusting in the sitting room. That is when Bridget says it was to Mrs. Churchill: that was at the first, when there was no mistake about it. And Bridget says: “She didn’t tell me. She hurried off.” No, Lizzie didn’t say anything about her hurrying off; nobody says that. Bridget told it to Mrs. Churchill. She hurried off, and “She, Mrs. Borden, didn’t tell me, Bridget, where she was going; she generally does.” Now have you the slightest doubt about that Mrs. Churchill you saw? She was called upon three times to tell that and she told it very clearly and I think convincingly. Now notice the questioning that follows: “That was what Bridget told you?” “Yes, sir.” “That was not what Lizzie told you?” “No, sir.” “Bridget said Mrs. Borden had a note?” “Yes.” “And she hurried off?” “Yes, sir.” “She was dusting the sitting room?” “Yes, sir.” “And Bridget says, ‘she didn’t tell me where she was going; she generally does,’ Bridget says.” “Bridget said that?” “Yes, sir.” “That was not what Lizzie said?” “No, sir.” “Now, you have got that right, haven’t you; no doubt about that?” “Bridget said that Mrs. Borden had a note to go and see some one who was sick. ‘She was dusting in the sitting room; she hurried off. She didn’t tell me where she was going: she generally does.’” Now, my friend who opened this case for the commonwealth said that Lizzie told a lie about that note. He used that word. I submit that that will hardly stand upon his evidence. If he had heard the evidence fully through he would not have uttered that expression, because here you have proved that Bridget gave the clearest and fullest statement about this matter, and you will probably infer from this that Lizzie learned from Bridget that Mrs. Borden had gone out, and she had a note to go because Bridget tells it with exact detail and holds it down herself. That is not criminal on the part of Bridget at all. I am only calling your attention to the directness of the testimony at the time, right on the very moment. Now, there is not anything in the testimony that really qualifies that at all. Miss Russell says that she heard the talk about the note, but she did not know who told it. Now notice that, and Bridget was there, Lizzie there, Mrs. Churchill there, and Miss Russell says she heard the talk about the note, but she does not know who told it, so that you see that you are uncertain there. Then Miss Russell tells about the conversation with Dr. Bowen, and with Lizzie about the note. Listen to it: “Lizzie, do you know anything about the note your mother had?” And she hesitated and said, well, no, she didn’t. Said Dr. Bowen, “I had looked in the waste basket,” and Miss Russell said “have you looked in your pocket?” and I think I said, “Well, then, she must have put it in the fire.” And Lizzie said, “Yes, she must have put it in the fire.” You see that the suggestion of putting it in the fire came from Miss Russell, not from Lizzie. Dr. Bowen had been searching the waste basket. He had looked around to see if he could find the note. He did not succeed, he calls their attention to it in this way I have stated, and they all assent to it and very likely that was true. It was not of any account. The woman had got the note and had tossed it away, very likely threw it in the kitchen stove and burned it, but we do not know anything about it. But they all seemed satisfied right there on the spot.