who stands uncontradicted and undisputed, or believe another man who is
fully contradicted by a man with him who was his own associate in the
police court. Now, Mr. Foreman and gentlemen, the government knew where
Mr. Lobinsky was, and that was at the tinshop of Mr. Wilkinson. They
knew where he was. And they knew, too, that Lobinsky’s horse was kept
at Mr. Gardner’s stable on Second street, corner of Rodman, and they
could have found whether Lobinsky had left the stable at 11 o’clock
or 10:30. But we have not troubled them to do that. Mr. Gardner, who
owns the stable has told his own story, and has he not told you that
Lobinsky’s statement is correct, that he did not leave the stable until
after 11 o’clock? He testified that that was because other teams were
to be hitched up to go ahead of Lobinsky, and he was late, so that he
did not get away until 11 or five minutes past 11 o’clock. My friend
Knowlton in cross-examining him wanted to know whether he told the
time on his watch by the long hand or the short hand. But that is all
right. Its good practice, but it is no test. Gardner remembers it, and
gives it, even, but Lobinsky did not have the watch. He told us what
time he left and the time he was passing by the yard on Second street.
And then we have Mr. Newhall, a man from Worcester, who happened to be
there; he comes here and tells you he went along the street, and he
fixes the time by the hour that he went to the bank, and the places
where he was that morning, and you have these three men that hold it
down to the time I refer to, that is 10:30 o’clock. Is it not fair
to say Mr. Mullaly is mistaken, to say the least? Then if they want
to find anything more about it, we land Mr. Douglass in this case,
who was there at the time, in Fall River. They knew about it and they
could have proved about it and they know it was as we say, and yet
they did not try to prove it. They say a story is true because told
all times alike, but those of us that have dealings with witnesses
in court know that witnesses that tell the truth often have slight
variations in their stories and we have learned to suspect the ones
that get off their testimony like parrots, as if they had learned
it by heart. Honest people are not particular about punctuation and
prepositions all the time. Now did she go to the barn? She says she
did and her statement is entitled to credit as she gave it on the spot
the moment when Bridget was upstairs and might know about it. Did she
go to the barn? Well, we find she did, find it by independent, outside
witnesses, thanks to somebody who saw her. Possibly this life of hers
is saved by the observation of a passenger on the street. There comes
along a pedler, an ice cream man, known to everybody in Fall River.
He is not a distinguished lawyer or a great minister or a successful
doctor. He is only an ice cream pedler, but he knows what an oath is,
and he tells the truth about it, and he says he passed down that street
that morning, and as he passed right along it was at a time when, he
says, he saw a woman, not Bridget Sullivan whom he knew, coming along,
walking slowly round the corner just before she would ascend those
side steps. Now there was no other woman alive in the house except
Bridget and Lizzie at that time. He knew it was not Bridget by the best
instinct, because he had sold her ice cream and he knew her. He says
“it was the other woman whom I had never sold ice cream.” Recollect,
that was Lizzie or some stranger in the yard. You will say undoubtedly
it was Lizzie as she comes back from the barn. It may be asked why did
he look in. I say because anyone might do so. They say Lizzie must have
looked under the bed. I say Lubinsky must have looked into the yard.
He was an enterprising young man, he was looking for business because
he has sold ice cream there before, and therefore, he noticed the
yard. Now is that something he remembers today and comes up here to
tell about or anybody has brought him to tell about? Nobody will make
that insinuation in regard to the defendant. Was he got to tell it? Let
us see. He told it on the 8th of August to the police, and they had
it all in their possession. Now, that is not a yarn made up for the
occasion at all, and the only sort of conflict about it is attempted in
this way, not to dispute it but to admit or say that Mr. Lubinsky is
mistaken about a half-hour of time.
Mr. Mullaly is one of the knights of the handle, you know. You know
who he is—Mr. Mullaly. Mr. Mullaly comes with a book, and it is
thrown down here on the table with a great display to us, for us to
pick it up, and with something written in it. It is not competent
evidence and has no business on the table, because it might be lost
and carried away, and it should be, but Mr. Mullaly says that on the
8th of August he had a talk with Mr. Lubinsky and Mr. Lubinsky told
him it was half-past ten o’clock. Now, if Mr. Lubinsky went by that
yard at half-past ten he did not see Miss Lizzie go to the barn. Is
Mr. Mullaly mistaken? Gentlemen, as you take cases in court, carefully
weighing the evidence, would not you say that Lubinsky went there at
the time he states and that the two others passed along that street and
that he saw Miss Lizzie going into the house? If that is true, then
the commonwealth must take back the charge that she lied about going
to the barn. She was out of the house at the very time when the slayer
murdered Mr. Borden. I will stop at this time for a moment.
Chief Justice Mason: “The jury may withdraw with the officers for a
recess of five minutes.”
One other thought, as you remember, that Lubinsky saw Manning as he
was going down and I think Gardner and Newhall also and you know when
Manning got there to the house all about it, so that you see it is
confirmed again in another way. Then they have an opportunity to find
out by Mr. Wilkinson whether this man was really late that day or not,
and as they have not told anything to the contrary, we will assume
that that is proved. Now the district attorney brought out the fact
from Mrs. Bowen that when Lizzie sat there in the kitchen her hands
were white and she was pale and distressed, as you know from other
witnesses. And I suppose from that he is going to argue to you that
she was not all covered with rust and dust that she got in the barn.
Well, you will see the strength of that argument, and think what it
amounts to. Think whether she could not go up there and look; whether
she picked up anything there or not nobody knows. I don’t know how
he can tell whether she was fumbling around with dusty iron and lead.
There is no evidence here about it, and I have seen many a young woman,
and I presume most of them, who could walk out into the barn and come
back without getting their hands dirty. So I will not stop long about
that. Bridget told about the groan and Mullaly told about the scraping,
speaking of her statements, but there is nothing else.
Whether she said that or not, we don’t know. If she did, it was
nothing more than the statement that all of us are likely to make.
When anything happens we imagine that we heard something; if it had
not happened we should not have heard anything. How common that is.
Then there were noises not connected with this tragedy which might
actually have been heard. There are noises in that street; you were
there long enough to find out about that; such noises are a common
occurrence. Then it may be that the people in their excitement—Bridget
in great excitement because she was running about breathless to find
something and Mullaly in the breathlessness of his search may have got
it wrong—may not have got it just right. It is not a serious matter.
They may argue it for all it is worth on the part of the commonwealth.
She thought she heard Mrs. Borden come in. They undoubtedly will make
something out of that, so I want your attention there to see about
that. This comes now in the first place from Bridget Sullivan. She is
asked, after detailing the circumstances to a certain point, “What
happened then?” You recollect that Bridget had told Mrs. Churchill that
Mrs. Borden had a note and had gone out—“hurried off, did not tell me
where she was going.” So you see anything from Bridget about that note
and about Mrs. Borden coming in is all sustained. Now Bridget Sullivan
says, in answer to the question, “What happened then?” “O, I says,
Lizzie, if I knew where Mrs. Whitehead’s was I would go and see if Mrs.
Borden was there, and tell her that Mr. Borden was very sick.” You see
the confirmation about that note business right there right off. What
should she say that she should go and see Mrs. Whitehead for if Mrs.
Borden was there, unless she (Bridget) knew that Mrs. Borden had a
note and supposed she had gone out as they both did. Then Lizzie said,
“Maggie, I am almost positive I heard her coming in, and won’t you go
up stairs and see.” Bridget said: “I am not going up stairs alone.”
Now, following the testimony down, the very next question is: “Before
that time that she said that, had you been up stairs?” “No, sir: I had
been upstairs after sheets for Dr. Bowen.”
Now remember how that occurred. When Dr. Bowen came he wanted a sheet
to cover up the body of Mr. Borden and he called upon Bridget and Mrs.
Churchill to get one. They went into the sitting room and took the key
off the mantel and went up the back stairs (where you went) unlocked
the door to Mrs. Borden’s room, got the sheets and came down the back.
So Bridget had been up the back stairs to that room, but she had not
been up the front stairs. Therefore when they got down stairs with
the sheets Bridget and Mrs. Churchill knew that Mrs. Borden was not
in her own room, because they had been up there. Therefore they knew
that she was not in the back of the house, and Lizzie knew that she
was not in the back part of the house, because they went up to get the
sheets into Mrs. Borden’s room. See how plain that is when you look
at the testimony, and it is brought out plainly in the testimony in
the questions that are asked by the commonwealth. So you see that when
Lizzie spoke about going upstairs to see if Mrs. Borden was in, Lizzie
meant the front stairs, because they all knew, the three of them, that
Mrs. Borden was not in her own room, and that if she was anywhere in
the house she must be in the front part of the house. So Lizzie knew
that Mrs. Borden had had a note and had gone out, and Bridget knew
that she had a note and had gone out, as they both believed; that
Lizzie had seen her up in the room making the beds and finishing up
before 9 o’clock, and she had not seen her since, believing that she
had gone out, and she recalled that she might have heard her come in
before her father came back, before Mr. Borden did, and she said at
once, “Go up at once and see if Mrs. Borden is not up in her room.
Mrs. Borden is not here. I heard a noise as though she came in, and
she must be upstairs in the front room somewhere. Go and see.” Now,
that is natural. They thought she was in the upper and back part of
the house, and there can be no doubt about that, because Miss Russell
testifies to the same thing Mrs. Churchill does, Bridget Sullivan does,
and then, after they came down, there it was that conversation about
going to Mrs. Whitehead’s occurred. “What happened then?” “Oh,” I says,
“Lizzie, if I knew where Mrs. Whitehead’s was, I would go and see if
Mrs. Borden was there.” These two women acting in perfect good faith
about it, relying upon the truth of that note story, which Mrs. Borden
had told them. Then Bridget would not go up the front stairs, because
in order to go up the front stairs they must necessarily pass through
the room where Mr. Borden’s dead body was lying, or else they must pass
through the dining room way and go by the corner of the room. They
went that way, and found Mrs. Borden killed. Mrs. Churchill and Miss
Russell tell precisely the same thing in substance about going up and
finding Mrs. Borden. Now the suggestion on the part of the commonwealth
would be, if this evidence was not so clear, that Lizzie knew that she
was up there, and if you assume Lizzie had killed her, then, of course,
it would be quite plain that she knew where she was, but if you do not
presume the defendant guilty to begin with, it shows nothing until
she is proved guilty. Then we have no difficulty with the statement
of these three women. They define and make it very plain. Mr. Borden,
you will remember, came in, as I have said, about 10:45 o’clock. Now
the inference that Mrs. Borden had come in was the most natural thing
in the world; hearing some noise in the house, perhaps the shutting
of a door. By and by we will say something about who might have shut
it—perhaps the movement of somebody else in that house that she
heard—she had no occasion to go to look and see, she was not called
to, and her father came in, and as Mrs. Borden had not appeared in the
sitting room, you understand, and as the two women going upstairs found
she was not in the back room upstairs, they would undoubtedly think if
she had come in she was in the front part of the house, and then she
recalled as she thought she did the fact that she had heard a noise
which indicated to her Mrs. Borden had come in. Now, I submit to you,
gentlemen, that, taking the testimony as it is here, and there is no
other that I know of, it exactly and clearly gives the situation as it
was, and just as they acted. Then they said that she showed no feeling
when her stepmother was lying dead on the guest-room floor; that she
laughed on the stairs.
Well, Bridget said something about opening the door. She said she said,
“O, pshaw,” and she said it in such a way that Lizzie laughed, standing
somewhere at her room door, a room where she could not see into the
guest chamber, and the door of which, so far as we know, was closed.
Nobody knows anything about it. What was there then why she shouldn’t
laugh? O, they say, she had murdered her step-mother. Oh, hold on. That
is not proved yet. You might think that everything was all right in
your house, and somebody track a joke on you and you laugh, but if the
evidence should turn out that your son had fallen dead on the floor
above, that does not warrant the conclusion that you were laughing
when his dead body was lying on the floor, because you did not know
it. They say she knew it. Well, then, I should agree if she knew it
and was laughing and joking about what Bridget said that she should be
blamed, and we would criticize her and condemn her, but they have not
any evidence of it. They assume it, and the district attorney opened
it, that while the dead body of Mrs. Borden was lying in the guest
chamber Lizzie laughed. Well, the inference was that she had murdered
her and then laughed. But that is assuming what they have not proved.
They say she did not look at her dead father. Well, she had looked at
him with horror. She had come in from the outside into the back hallway
and come into the kitchen, and the door stood ajar, and she started to
go into the sitting room when this horrible sight met her gaze. She had
seen her father. Did they ask her to go and wring her heart over the
remains that were mutilated beyond recognition? and because she did
not rush into the sitting room and stand over against that mutilated
body they say she is guilty. Why, Mrs. Churchill and Bridget Sullivan
and Miss Russell could not pass through there unless they touched the
corner after the body was covered. Let us ask of other innocent people
the same thing that you would ask of Lizzie. They say that Miss Lizzie
did not show any signs of fear, but that Dr. Bowen and Mrs. Sawyer were
afraid. They told you about it. Well, how do they know she did not
show any signs of fear? Why do they make any such statement as that?
Because she said to Bridget, “You must go get somebody, for I can’t
stay in this house alone.” Look at things in a natural and easy way, in
a common sense way, assuming her innocence and not assuming her guilt.
That is the way you will meet these things and all of the facts. Then
they start off on another track, and they say she killed her stepmother
and her father because that was a house without any comforts in it.
Well, gentlemen, I hope you all live in a better way than the Borden
family lived, so far as having good furniture and conveniences. Are
your houses all warmed with steam? Do you have carpets on every one
of your floors, stairs and all? Do you have pictures and pianos and a
library and all conveniences and luxury? Do you? Well, I congratulate
you, if you do.
This is not a down-trodden people. There is lots of comfort in our
country homes. I know something of them, but I remember back in my
boyhood we did not have gas and running water in every room. We were
not brought up that way. We did not have such things as you saw in
the Borden house. It wasn’t in poverty-stricken, desolate quarters
like a shanty, where the folks simply live and breathe and do not eat
anything. They paraded here the bill of fare for breakfast. I do not
know what they are going to talk about, what sort of breakfast the
ordinary country people have in the houses. They do not live as well
as we do in hotels, perhaps they live better. I do not wish to say a
word against the hotel, but perhaps a coarser fare is as good as the
fixed-up notions that we get on the hotel table, but at any rate it is
the way people live in our towns and cities, and no considerable number
of people have come to harm.
Andrew Borden was a simple man, an old-fashioned man. He did not dress
himself up with jewelry. He carried a silver watch. He was a plain man
of the every day sort of fifty years ago. He was living along in that
way. His daughters were brought up with him. They had become connected
with prominent things in Fall River, for they lived at home. They had
the things which you saw upon them. You will know well enough they
were not poorly supplied, and were not pinched and were not starved
into doing this thing. Do you think it looked as if they were starved
into the crime and pinched into wrong? Here was a young woman with
property of her own. Starved to death, they say; pinched so that she
could not live, wrought up to frenzy and madness, so that she would
murder her own father for the want of things, and yet, as has been
shown here worth in her own right of money and personal property from
$4000 to $5000, owning also real estate in common with her sister there
in Fall River. What is the use of talking about that? Did she want any
more to live on in comfort? Do they say she wanted to get her father’s
property or a half of it? Do they reason that she went and killed the
stepmother first so that when the property came by inheritance it would
pass to herself and sister. They must say something. They say she
killed her stepmother because of trouble. That is one of the arguments
about which I will speak by and by, but then there is no trouble with
her father, as they see, and then she had a change of purpose, or she
had a double purpose, to kill Mrs. Borden because she did not like
her, and to kill her father because she liked him, but she wanted his
money. What sort of a compound! Two motives are running through that
argument inconsistent with each other, each directed independently to
a specific end: Carried out as to one in the early part of the murder,
and then she not only changed her dress and cleaned herself and became
another woman, but found herself inhabited with a distinct motive and
then slaughtered her father. Sometimes when a young man goes on a rig
and becomes dissolute and a spendthrift he will do almost anything
to retrieve what he calls the misfortune which he has brought upon
himself, and many an old father has found the gray hairs in his head
multiplied because of the waywardness of his boy. Sometimes these
great crimes are committed in that way, but if you expect to find in
this case that a young woman like her was slaughtering her father
when she herself was moral and upright and christian and charitable
and devoted to good things in this world, you will find something that
the books have never recorded, and which will be a greater mystery
than the murder itself. They tell us about the ill-feelings. Well,
gentlemen, I am going to consider that in a very few words, because I
say to you that the government has made a lamentable failure on that
question. They say that is the motive that so qualifies the different
acts that are testified to here that it puts this defendant in close
connection with the murder of Mrs. Borden, and then they say that Mrs.
Borden being murdered, Lizzie murdered Mr. Borden for his property,
or possibly they may say, murdered him to conceal her crime—for that
or some other reason, but it does not rest at all on this foundation
of family relations. Let us see what there was in it. What have they
proved? They have proved that from five or six years ago Lizzie did
not call Mrs. Borden mother. Lizzie is now a woman of thirty-one or
thirty-three years old, thirty-two when these crimes were committed.
Mrs. Borden was her stepmother, and she was not her own mother. It is
true that Mrs. Borden came there when Lizzie was a little child of two
or three years, and sometimes we see that where a stepmother has come
into a large family and has brought up a family the children know no
difference and always call her mother just the same. That is true in
a very large degree, happily so, too: but sometimes when the children
get grown up, and when they are told about their mother that died long
ago, somehow or other there springs up in the mind of the children a
yearning or a longing to know of the parent that they really had; and
how many a man says, in speaking of the family from which he came, “She
is not my mother.”
He calls her mother, perhaps. He introduces her as “my mother,” but
the first words after you engage him in conversation are, “She is not
my mother, she is my stepmother. My mother died long ago. She lies
buried twenty-five years, but still she was my mother.” I suspect that
man never lets into the inner chambers of his heart the feeling that
anybody else in the world can stand where his mother did. You may gloss
it over, you may talk about it as much as you will, but happy is the
man that remembers his mother, that pure mother that lived to see him
grow up, and kind as anybody else may be, there never goes out of his
heart the feeling for that dead one that is gone, that stood first and
foremost to him, and nursed him in his babyhood. It does not require
passion or ill will to hold that feeling, begotten in the heart. Show
me the man that does not stand for the reputation and character of his
mother, for nobody forgets that his own mother was the one he first was
interested in, although he from a prattling child has never known her
to remember her. Now, says Mr. Fleet, in his emphatic police manner,
Miss Lizzie said to him, “She is not my mother; she is my stepmother.”
Perhaps she did. We will assume she said it, but there is nothing
criminal about it, or nothing that indicated it, or nothing savoring
of a murderous purpose, is there? Why, Martha Chagnon, a very good
looking little girl that was here a day or two ago, stepped on the
stand and began to talk about Mrs. Chagnon as her stepmother. Well,
I advise the city marshal to put a cordon around that house so that
there will not be another murder there. Right here in your presence she
spoke of her stepmother. And a good-looking woman came on the stand
afterward, and I believe the blood of neither of them has been spilled
since. Why, Lizzie, who undoubtedly speaks in just that positive way,
when the police asked her about where she was and what she was doing,
spoke positively. There are a good many people living in New England
who would do the same. They know when they are insulted, and are free
in expressing their minds, and sometimes do so too freely and talk
too much, but we never think they are going to murder any one. Now
you have got the whole thing right there in that statement, as they
call it. Now, they say that Mrs. Gifford told us this. It was told on
the stand. Let us have it for all it is worth. She is the cloakmaker,
you remember. I do not discredit her. “Don’t say mother to me. She
is a mean, good-for-nothing thing.” “I said, ‘O.’ She said, ‘I don’t
have much to do with her. I stay in my room most of the time.’ And I
said, ‘You come down to your meals, don’t you?’ and she said ‘Yes, but
we don’t eat with them if we can help it.’” That is the whole of it.
That was a year ago last March. Now, my learned friend who opened the
case said that Mrs. Gifford would say that she hated her. My friend,
the district attorney, who makes the argument, will take out that,
will admit she did not say any such thing. You heard her story on
the stand, and that was not so. Now I agree with you that Lizzie A.
Borden is not a saint, and, saving your presence, I have some doubts
whether all of you are saints; that is to say, whether you really
never speak hurriedly or impatiently. I hope that is so for the peace
of our families, but I do know good-looking men, just as good-looking
as you, if you will allow me to say it, that speak sometimes in their
households a little hastily and quickly, and sometimes the daughters,
too, and sometimes their fathers and mothers do. It is to be regretted
that they do, but they will. Yet you don’t read of murders in those
houses. There is nothing to indicate any deep-seated feeling. You will
hear people speak to each other on the street in such a way that if
you thought it really amounted to anything it would shock you. Now, is
there anything bad about this case, where a woman like this defendant
speaks openly and frankly, and says right out, “She is not my mother:
she is my stepmother.” She spoke so about the man who was called a
Portuguese. What did she say? “He is not a Portuguese. He is a Swede,”
in just the same tone of voice. That is her way of speaking, you will
find on this testimony, and she speaks right out. Now these people
are not the ones who do the harm in this world. The ones who do harm
are like the dog that does not make any noises about it. The dog that
comes round your heels and barks is not the one that bites. It is the
one that stays inside and looks serious, you will find. So it is with
individuals. It is not the outspoken, blunt and hearty that do the
injury. But now I do not want to trouble myself about that.
Bridget Sullivan, who lived in the family two years and nine months,
who was nearer to all of them than anybody else, tells you the
condition of the household. She says, though brought in constant
contact with them, she never heard anything out of the way. There was
no quarreling. Everything seemed cordial among them. The girls did not
always go to the table. They were often out late, and I suppose they
did not get down to breakfast as early as the old folks. The longer
ago you were born the earlier you will probably rise now. If you
were born seventy years ago, you will probably be up in the morning
at 4 o’clock, and be disposed to find fault with the Creator that it
cannot be summer all the time with more light and longer days. But the
girls did not come until they wanted to. They had a right to do that.
Bridget says she never heard a word of complaint. And mark you, that
Thursday morning on which they tell you that Lizzie was entertaining
that purpose or plan to murder both those people—that is, their
theory is what they will undertake to satisfy you of—that Lizzie was
talking to Mrs. Borden. Bridget Sullivan says: “I heard them talking
together calmly, without the least trouble, everything all right.”
Mr. Borden talks about the meal, and the conversation goes on in the
usual way without the slightest indication of any ill-feeling. That is
the way my people do at home. That is the way your family greets you
in ordinary conversation. They are waiting for you to come back just
now, and they will meet you in the same way I know, and there will
be no suspicion about it. O, they say, just look at her, wretch and
fiend and villain that she was, she could put all this on when she had
terrors unimaginable in her heart and purposes that no language could
describe. Well, gentlemen, you have to judge of people according to the
ordinary things. There being no proof of such purposes on her part,
you will not justify yourselves in ascribing them to her. You will
remember that Mrs. Raymond, the dressmaker, a lady to all appearances,
came and testified of their being together a few months before, four of
them being dressmaking, sitting in the guest chamber sewing, a regular
dressmaking party. Philip Harrington ought to have been there and had
the whole style developed to him, to learn more than he knows, if it is
possible to put anything into his head on the subject. There they are.
Was that an angry family? Was that a murderous group? You take another
thing. You have them there, as Bridget says, and there is no evidence
to the contrary; they have told you the whole thing; when Emma Borden
comes on the stand to tell the inside condition of the family they
will say to you that Miss Emma Borden, the sister who was away from
home on a visit at this time, against whom they have not the slightest
suspicion, but they will say that her sisterly affection carries her
along to swing her from the truth. You’ll judge of her. I will not
apologize for her. She has a right to be where her sister is. It is
creditable that she does stand by her and it will take a long time for
a man in his heart to say she is untruthful for telling what she does
here.
She went on to say that they had trouble five or six years ago in
regard to property and there was no resentment so far as Lizzie was
concerned; it was all adjusted. When we get the open and unrestrained
testimony of Miss Emma we are told there was trouble. The father had
put in Mrs. Borden’s hands a piece of property, and she says: “we did
not feel satisfied, and we told him so, and then came the word to
us through another person, ‘your father is all ready to give you a
property for yourselves to make it even if you will only ask for it.’”
They asked for it and got it. And Emma says she never felt right about
it afterward. She says up to the day of the death of Mrs. Borden she
had not overlooked it, but she says as to Lizzie there never was any
trouble about it—never was after that time. There is a difference
between the two girls. One blurts out exactly as she feels, the other
bears what she is called upon to endure in silence. You will find the
same separate and distinct dispositions often in the same family. From
that time, five years, more than half of it covered by the residence
of Bridget Sullivan, there is no word of any trouble or indication of
anything except this remark made by Mrs. Gifford. If you take it all,
what is there in it that signifies anything, enough to find the motive
for these dastardly crimes?
But there is another thing: Here was an old man with two daughters,
an elderly one and a younger one. They had gone on together. He was a
man that wore nothing in the way of ornament or jewelry but one ring,
and that ring was Lizzie’s. It had been put on many years ago when
Lizzie was a little girl, and the old man wore it and it lies buried
with him in the cemetery. He liked Lizzie, did he not? He loved her as
his child. And the ring that stands as the pledge of plighted faith
and love, that typifies the dearest relationship that is ever created
in life, that ring was the bond of union between the father and the
daughter. No man should be heard to say that she murdered the man that
so loved her. The old-fashioned man lived in a simple way, did not care
anything about the frivolities of life, was not attractive, perhaps, to
some of the younger and go-ahead people, but was one who lived in his
own way, had worked himself up to what would be called a fortune, had
taken care of it, was then superintending its use and the income, and
for all that on his little finger was that ring which belonged to his
little girl. You may tell me, if you want, that the relation between
that parent and child was such that alienation was complete, and wrong
was the purpose of her heart, but you will not ask me to believe it.
Mind you that on this question of the relations of these people there
is not a word that comes from Mr. Morse of any ill-feeling, or from
Miss Russell or any other living person, and so I think you will agree
with me that there is not anything whatever in this assumption that the
feelings were such that the defendant could have had guilty intent and
worked out this guilty act. I pass. The learned district attorney, in
his opening, said that there was an impassable wall built up through
that house. But the moment we got at the wall, down it went, doors flew
open and instead of showing a line in the house shut in and hedged
in by locks, we find that Mr. Borden’s room was doubly and trebly
locked, Bridget’s room was locked and Mrs. Borden’s door was locked,
and you find Miss Lizzie’s room locked, as well as Emma’s, the guest
chamber is locked, the parlor and sitting room—I don’t know but what
everything, and that was all because there had been a burglary in the
house and barn, and Mr. Borden, old-fashioned, in that he was, thought
they wanted to lock the house pretty securely. He kept a safe in that
back room which kept valuables. This was locked day and night, and not
a little care was given to the fastening of the doors and all parts
of the house. But you see the impassable wall was not as against the
two girls, but was simply a matter of protection to keep people out.
If it was an impassable wall, and not to keep people out, why did they
have a lock on the door to the back stairs, and why did they lock up
the attics? They say she rushed in from the outside and discovered the
homicide. There is no proof of that. In another place they say she
did not go out of the house. They claim in one breath that she did
not go to the barn and then say that she ran in and discovered the
homicide. Rushed in from where, if she did not go out? But if after she
discovered it, she passed in and saw the horrid sight, the testimony
shows that she retreated to the side room, and got as far from it as
she could. She undoubtedly dreaded an attack from the murderer who
had killed her father, and she stood at the closed screen door with
the open wood door behind it and shouted to Bridget. Bridget was the
quickest to respond. She could not go to the front part of the house
without passing the horrible sight, her dead father. Where could she
go? Where would you go under the circumstances? She called for Bridget
to run and get some one as quickly as she could. If she had murdered
those two people do you think she would have called for Bridget as
quick as that? Wouldn’t she have gone down the street or done something
of that kind where she would not have been in such close proximity to
the scene of this tragedy? But she went and shouted for Bridget and
asked her to come down, all in the trepidation and alarm, to find Mr.
Borden killed. You cannot faint away, you cannot look pale when you try
to, and so when Bridget had gone this woman stood pale and trembling
by that open door on that August morning. Looking over she saw Mrs.
Churchill; Mrs. Churchill, too, saw her, and noticed the distress she
was in, and as she stood by the closed window where she could not speak
to her she hurried at once to the open window and called out, “O,
Lizzie, what is the matter?”
Have you any patience with any man who will tell you that Lizzie stood
at that door that morning like a marble statue, without any feeling? I
have told you about Mrs. Borden. All those three people were sick in
the house on Tuesday, including Lizzie. It was in August weather, and
whether they had eaten something or the weather had caused it, we do
not know, but the government seems to be floundering around with the
idea that because Bridget was not sick, they had been poisoned. There
was talk about poison, and poison was feared in the family, because all
had been made sick. Then they say for some reason, I do not know what,
that Miss Lizzie went downstairs in the cellar that Thursday night.
There had been people there examining the rooms and looking over the
bodies, and there was water in the pitcher up in her room, and people
had been washing there during the day, that Mrs. Holmes said, “If I
should stay there all night I should want the slop-pail emptied.”
But that house was surrounded by policemen, and Officer Hyde was there,
and Miss Lizzie had a full-grown kerosene lamp in her hand and the
windows were all open with ample opportunity for observers outside to
see in and those within the house knew that policemen were all around
so that there was nothing concealed. Now, a person who is going to do
anything to cover up crime will not carry an electric light with him.
The criminal goes into the dark to do his dark deed. Miss Lizzie did
not see anybody, though they say Officer Ferguson was in front, but he
is not brought forward, and if he were he could not see through two
high board partitions. That would tax the energy and perspicacity of
even a Fall River policeman. Then they say she burned a dress. Well,
the general thought in the mind of everybody is that if a person burns
up anything in connection with some important transaction, he does it
to get it out of the way for the purpose of avoiding observation. That
is natural. The government stakes its case on that dress.
The government says: “You gave us up the blue dress that lies before
me. That is not the dress. You practically commit a falsehood by giving
us that.” The defendant says that this is the dress. The government
says we want that bedford cord, and if we had that bedford cord we
should know all about it, and you burned the bedford cord. Now, let us
look at it. There is a dispute here, a disagreement, not intentional,
but unavoidable, among the persons who saw what Lizzie had on that
morning, some of them saying that she had on this very dress, or a dark
blue dress and another, and Mrs. Churchill speaking of it as a light
blue coming almost up to a bay blue, or something a good deal lighter
than this.
Now between the two there is a difference of recollection; just as good
people on one side say it was a dark blue as those on the other who
say it was a light blue. But you will remember that at that time there
were several ladies and Bridget was there with a lighter-colored dress,
and that those who speak of a lighter-colored dress may have had in
mind what Bridget had on. It was not a time for examining colors, and
afterward they recollected as well as they could. They are good, honest
people, but some of them are mistaken, and of course are not wilfully
stating what they do not believe to be the fact. So that there is a
conflict of testimony about that. That dark blue dress lying here is
given as the one that Lizzie had on. They say, “You had a light blue
dress on.” We say it is not so, but we say to you when we produced the
dark blue dress you took it and put into the hands of Dr. Dolan, the
medical examiner, and you went away with it and used it in framing
your indictment, and now you find through Prof. Wood, a man who knows
something, instructing Dr. Dolan, that there is not and never was any
blood on it.
[Illustration: CHIEF JUSTICE MASON.]
Then the government does not want that dress, but another. They want
the bedford cord. We will talk about it, then. Let us look at it.
Suppose they had this bedford cord. Lizzie had it on this morning,
you say. This is the present theory. The government said she had it
on up to 12 o’clock, so that she did not change to the pink wrapper
until that time. The witnesses all say and every single person who has
testified that while she was there and about with them, including Mrs.
Churchill, Bridget and Dr. Bowen, Mrs. Bowen and others, there was not
a particular spot of blood on it. They say there was no blood on her
hands, her face or hair. I am talking now of the dress principally.
Now recollect that she had that on. Policemen were coming in all about
there. She was lying on the lounge. They tell you that that dress
was covered or had blood spots on it and not a living person saw or
suggested it. Suppose she did burn it up—the time that had elapsed
for observation would be long enough. They had all had it to look at
at that time. They had all seen her and every one says there was not
a spot of blood on it. So you see you start with a dress that every
one of the witnesses they produced says did not have blood upon it.
Now, you have removed from that all idea that that dress was burned
with a wrongful intent, because all the witnesses say it was perfectly
clear of blood. Now, what more? That dress was in that closet. You,
gentlemen, saw it over the front door, and there it remained. In that
closet were eighteen or twenty dresses, and the government witnesses
claimed that they did not see any such dress, notwithstanding that
Miss Lizzie had eight blue dresses of different shades in that hall
closet. They examined and did not see any that had a particle of blood
upon them, and so the pretense of the government is that the dress was
not in there, but Miss Emma says that when she came home on Thursday
night she went to the closet room to put away her clothes and that on
Saturday night she was there again and that dress was hanging on the
second row of the nails that were driven into the edge of the shelf.
She says she discovered that old dress hanging there that had been
covered with paint ever since May, and by covered with paint I mean
stained and daubed with it. She spoke to Lizzie about it, saying, “Why
don’t you get rid of that thing. I can’t find a place to hang my dress
on?” It had been in there, and on Saturday night they ransacked this
place and found the dress which they supposed had blood upon it. They
carried it to Dr. Dolan, who made the discovery, certain to their mind,
that would convict this woman, and so they did not want anything else.
They went through the form of looking over everything else, but had got
the damning evidence here; but when Dr. Dolan conversed with a man who
knew something, they were told it was not blood at all, and then they
said: “Get another dress.”
Now, is it true? Was there grease or paint on it? We have brought you
the painter here that painted that house a week earlier in May, and we
have brought a dressmaker who made the dress, and the painter has told
us that Lizzie did the superintending of the painting, and got up at 6
o’clock in the morning to see that the paint was of the proper color,
and says that she tried it upon the side of the house. You have heard
Mr. Grouard, who testified that that dress had got soiled, and said
that it was not fit to wear. And then it was not worn of any account
except on the days when she had dirty work to do, and Emma knew about
it, Mrs. Raymond knew about it, and it is the indisputable fact that
it was besmeared with paint and it was not fit for anything else. Why,
we are talking about a dress that did not cost but twelve-and-a-half
or fifteen cents a yard and took eight or nine yards to make it,
and did not cost altogether when it was commenced probably over two
dollars, and was not good for anything after they got it done, because
the material was so poor, wearing out and fading out. And then it got
dirty, got paint on it, and what more did they want of it? As Emma
said, “Put it out of the way. Why do you keep the old thing?” This
morning, you remember, was after the police had searched everything
in the house so completely that there was nothing more to be found
unless they took the paper off the walls and the carpets off floors,
and we will take their word for it. Unless that, there was nothing
more to be seen and nothing more to be found, and they had all they
wanted, and had got her clothes and her stockings, and even an unmade
dress pattern, and wanted to see if that had not been made up into
some sort of a mantle to wrap her up in. They had got the whole thing,
and had looked over everything, and had taken all they could find and
all they wanted, and notified them they had all got through. Then, in
obedience to Emma’s injunction, Lizzie walks down into the kitchen
with it that Sunday morning, the windows all open, no blinds shut,
policemen in the yard looking right in at everything, that was going
on, and deliberately and in the presence of Emma—Emma saying to her
“Well, I think you had better do it”—put it into the fire and burned
it up. Had not she time enough Thursday morning down to that time to
burn it up without anybody knowing it, if it was covered with blood?
Had not she time enough to get it out of the way, and if she had that
purpose to cover up this crime, if she had committed it, would she have
burned it in the presence of her sister and Miss Russell and said she
was going to do it? That is not humanly probable. Now, you have got the
whole thing about the dress. There is no concealment about it. And when
Miss Russell, in her trepidation, and having been advised by somebody
about it, came to her and said: “I think you have done the worst thing
you could in burning that dress,” Lizzie spoke up in her prompt and
honest way, saying, “O, why did you let me do it, then?” reproaching
them for not advising her against it. And, truthful as they are, when
they knew Miss Russell had been questioned about the matter, they said
tell all you know about it. And Miss Russell walks to the man Hanscom
and says she has come to tell him because they said go and tell about
it. Lizzie said: “Go and tell all about it.” It does not hurt people,
sometimes, to tell the truth, to tell all about it. But, gentlemen,
hang upon that one blue dress. They have it in the testimony now; they
know all about it. Their own witnesses that they bring do not help them
at all in this theory. But I ask them this: If Lizzie Borden killed her
mother at 9:45 o’clock that morning and then was ready to come down
stairs and greet her father and meet him, having on the blue dress, do
you think that is probable, besmeared and bedaubed as she would have
been with the blood of the first victim, standing astride and chopping
her head into pieces by these numerous blows, blood flying all over the
walls and furniture, on the bed and everywhere, and she wasn’t touched
at all with blood? Then, of course, they are going to say: “O, but she
changed her dress, and then, when she killed her father she either had
that back again or put on another.” Did she have it back again? Then
she had to put that on over her clothes again, and over her person,
exposing herself to have her underclothing soiled in that way, a thing
not probable in any way. And then, if she put on another dress, then
there were two dresses to burn instead of one. The government only
wants one; they have all the rest. Think of it. She walked right into
that sea of blood, and stood there, slashing it over herself in the
first murder; then went and took off that dress and laid it away until
her father came in, and then dressed herself for the second slaughter.
Then they say that she murdered these two people because Mrs. Reagan,
I forbear almost to mention her name, came up here and told you that
those sisters had a quarrel, and that Lizzie said to Emma, “You have
given me away.” Gentlemen, if there is anybody given away in this case,
it is Mrs. Hannah Reagan.
We have got right over among the reporters for the solid truth, now,
and we have got John R. Caldwell and Thomas F. Hickey, and John J.
Manning. They came from different papers and different cities, and
these gentlemen tell you they went to Mrs. Reagan and she said there
was not a word of truth in it, and while Mr. Caldwell was trying
to find out the facts from Marshal Hilliard, that official, in the
abundance of his politeness, told him to get out. My learned friend
asked Hickey if it was not a “scoop” between the _Boston Globe_ and the
_Boston Herald_.
And they say that possibly she contradicted herself on some little
things, and you noticed the humor there was about it when Philip
Harrington said, “I advised her not to submit to another interview
that day.” I thank him. But in walked the rest of the score, and they
proceeded to interview, not asking Harrington’s leave, and Harrington
himself went there that night again to try his search over with her.
That is the way they dealt with her. Now, gentlemen, there is not
one of them that, interpreted in the light of the common every-day
transactions in the household, is entitled to your credit. And if
not, then you cannot group them so as to make them strong or of any
influence. She did not try to get Bridget out of the house. If she had
undertaken to do these deeds, think you not that she would not have
sent Bridget down street to buy something, to go for the marketing, to
go to the store, one thing and another? Or send her on some errand, and
then have had time undisturbed. You know that she would. But instead
of that, everything goes on as usual, and Bridget was about the work.
Lizzie happens to walk out to the door, and Bridget says to her, “You
need not lock the door, I will be around here.” Bridget knew what the
habit of that house was, and so she said, “You need not lock that door,
I will be around here.” So Lizzie did not lock it. Lizzie called her
attention later after she got the work done, and that they say, after
Mrs. Borden was killed, she called her attention to locking the doors
if she went out, because she herself might go out. And she spoke to her
about the cheap sale at Sargent’s, and there is no doubt about that
being true, because they could readily find out in Fall River whether
there was any cheap sale at Sargent’s at that time. Now, these are the
grounds on which the government will claim or has claimed, and I don’t
know what other theories they have claimed, the guilt of the prisoner.
Who did it, and what did it? You see last year they had the theory
about these other things, and if they could have tried the case at
that time they would have sought to convict this woman on those first
four. They now do not dare to say that they would ask to convict her
even upon these. They say it may have been. Is the government, trying a
case of may-have-beens? Will the judges tell you, as they charge you,
that you can convict this defendant upon a theory that it may have
been. I think not. Never. And, if they cannot tell you that that is
the implement that committed the crimes, where is it. Fall River seems
to be prolific of hatchets. Perhaps if we wait awhile there will be
another one born. Possibly the district attorney, or the officers over
there—not the district attorney, for I don’t think he has anything to
do with it, to do justice to him, or possibly some officer, will find
some other hatchet and want to bring it in. Well, we are thankful,
gentlemen, that this woman was not tried last August or September,
because then, if she had gone to trial on the things that are now
declared to be innocent, and they had convicted her with the cow’s hair
and the appearances of blood, she possibly would now have been beyond
their recall, although they had actually put her to death wrongfully.
So much for the theory of experts. And now we are asked at this time to
take up another one that they do not vouch for and that they did not
dare to stand on, and we are asked to submit this defendant to that
incriminating evidence which they say they are not sure about or may
have been, and they want to convict her now on things they do not know
anything about and do not claim to know anything about, and put it out
of their power, six months hence, to tell them if she knows anything
about somebody else committing these murders. They have had her for ten
months in close control. It has been irksome and wearisome and wearing.
Bad as the government would represent her home to be, and falsely so;
bad as they would picture it, it is a paradise compared with a jail,
and they have transferred her, such is the process of the law, from her
home into the custody of the State. And they thought that Tuesday’s
sickness and Wednesday morning’s sickness was caused by some irritant
poison. But Mr. Wood said: “No, everything is all right; no blood,
no poison, nothing whatever.” He has practically said to these men:
“Hold on, you are going too far; you cannot go this way.” Now failing
in that, as I argue to you, they have unmistakably, they proceed upon
the theory, who did it? Now we are not obliged to resort to that, as
I told you at the outset. The question is, is this defendant a guilty
person, and that is all. But they say, and they said they would prove
to you, that there is exclusive opportunity. Well, gentlemen, I meet
it right squarely. I say that if they can lock into that house Bridget
and Lizzie alone and without having any other way for any other person
to get in, and no other person does get in, and two persons are found
dead, I am ready to say that Mr. Borden did not kill his wife in that
way and then afterward kill himself. I am sure about that. But the
exclusive opportunity is nothing but an anticipation that was not
realized, as I think we have shown you.
They said nobody else could have done it. Emma was gone. Morse was
gone. There is no doubt about that. Bridget was out doors, they said,
and later in her room. They said that the defendant was really shut
up in the house with the two victims and that everybody else was
actually and absolutely shut out. Now I think you and I will agree
about the evidence. The cellar door was undoubtedly locked; I mean
the one outside. I have no doubt of that. The front door in the usual
course, so says the evidence, was bolted up by Lizzie Wednesday night
and unbolted by her Thursday morning. Now they assume she bolted it
Wednesday night, but they are not going to assume, I suppose, that in
the usual course she unbolted it Thursday morning, but I do, because
that is the evidence, leaving only the spring lock on when she unbolted
it. They say you do not know that. Well, I say, you do not know it, and
you have got the burden of proof, not I. It was fastened by the bolt
when Bridget let Mr. Borden in, that is true—the bolt and the key.
The side screen door, gentlemen, was unfastened from about 9 o’clock
to 10:45 or 11. That is when Bridget was washing windows and about the
house and around the premises in the way she said she was. Now, if that
door wasn’t locked, gentlemen, Lizzie wasn’t locked in and everybody
else wasn’t locked out. Was it so, the screen door unfastened? You
know Bridget said to Lizzie, “You needn’t lock the door, I am going to
be around here.” There is no doubt about it. Bridget says she didn’t
lock it. Then there was a perfect entrance to that house by that rear
screen door, wasn’t there? And when the person got in all he had to
do was to avoid meeting Bridget and Lizzie. Bridget was outdoors,
she wasn’t in the way, and therefore there was but one person in the
house so far as appears, one person below, against whom the intruder
could run. Now, look at it. Bridget was outside talking with the Kelly
girl, over there on the south side, away off at the corner. She said
plainly and decidedly there was nothing to hinder anybody going right
in. Mr. Borden had gone down street and there was nobody there on the
outside but Bridget, and she was everywhere on the outside. She washed
the parlor windows. You know how those are. She couldn’t see the side
door when she was there. She went to the barn seven or eight times for
water, she says: it may have been more. She was at the dining room
windows on the north side of the house; and she said that when she was
there she couldn’t even see into the dining room, because the windows
are so high that unless a person stood up close to the window they
couldn’t see in.
Now, see the significance of that. The government will be going to
claim that she stood there and she could have seen way across into the
sitting room. But she could not. She was washing the windows with a
pole and brush, she wasn’t up on the steps on the outside. And then
Lizzie was about the house as usual. She was in the house and about the
house. Doing just the same as any decent woman does, attending to her
work. Ironing handkerchiefs, going up and down stairs, going down to
the cellar, to the closet. You say these things are not all proved? No,
but I am taking you into the house just as I would go into the house,
for instance, and say, what are your wives doing now? Well, doing the
ordinary work around the house, getting dinner. Well, where do they go?
Undoubtedly they are going down stairs for potatoes, going out into
the kitchen, to the sink room, here and there. You can see the whole
thing. It is photographed in your mind. It is just the same there. She
was ironing, she was in the dining room. Bridget says she don’t know
but she had the dining room door shut to keep the heat out, and she
would have occasion to go down cellar for reasons stated. Might she
have gone into the parlor for anything? There was a clock there. There
are various things you might think about. Now, suppose the assassin
came there, and I have shown you he could without question, the house
was all open on the north side, and suppose he came there and passed
through. Suppose Lizzie was upstairs, suppose she were downstairs in
the cellar. He passed through. Where could he go? Plenty of places.
He could go upstairs into the spare room, right up the front stairs,
and go in there; he could go into that hall closet where you opened
it and looked in, and where two men can go in and stand; he could go
into the sitting room closet; he could go into the pantry there in the
kitchen; you saw that. He could go into various places. He could go
into just such places in that house as all these thieves run into if
they can find a door open. So it was easy enough for a man to do that.
It was easy enough for him to go up into that bed chamber and secrete
himself. Now, what is going to be done? He is there for the murder; not
to murder Mrs. Borden, but to murder Mr. Borden. And he is confronted
and surprised by the former. And he knows—possibly he is somebody that
she knew—you do not know, she cannot tell us—somebody that would be
recognized and identified, and he must strike her down; and his purpose
to kill Mr. Borden would not stop at the intervention of another
person, and Lizzie and Bridget and Mrs. Borden, any or all of them,
would be slaughtered if they came in that fellow’s way.
Now, at that time in the morning, with the opportunity to go in there
and go up into all the house, and when he went in there and had
murdered Mrs. Borden in that front chamber, Lizzie could pass up and
down stairs, and could go to her room, and know nothing about it, see
nothing about it, because of course he did not have the door open and
disclose himself. She could pass up and down stairs. There is no
trouble about that, closed door or open door. And when he had done
his work, and Mr. Borden had come in, as he could hear him, he made
ready then to come down at the first opportunity, and when he came
down he would very naturally leave the door open, and so they found
it afterward, the door, I mean, to the spare chamber. He could come
down, and he was right at the scene ready. Bridget was outdoors, Lizzie
outdoors, on all the evidence, which you certainly believe. And then he
could do his work quickly and securely, and pass out the same door, if
you please, that he came in at, the side door. Now, that is not all. It
is well enough to see that a person could come in at the front door.
The bolt slid back in the morning, the latch locked, a man can open
that door, they all say, by giving it a pressure and trying to come in.
And when he gets in what does he do? He doesn’t want to be surprised.
He locks the door himself, he takes care of himself, and then when Mr.
Borden comes it is slid back by Bridget and left in that way. It is
easy to see all these things. You can see then how everything in this
idea of exclusive opportunity falls to the ground, because there was no
exclusive opportunity.
Now, it is not for us to maintain a theory. It is for the government
to prove theirs. You may adopt a theory just as well as I. You may
find other theories, as I have no doubt you will as you look at this
evidence. You will see other ways in which persons could enter that
house by which the exclusive opportunity theory is overturned. It
is not a matter for you to sit down in the jury room and criticise
the theory that I have advanced to you, because you are going to sit
down in the jury room and criticise the theory that the government
advances, and you will see that it is vulnerable, and when you see
that a person can take one of those theories as well as another, you
will hear from the court that you cannot convict upon such evidence,
because all the essential facts must be in harmony with this charge
against the prisoner, and must not be in harmony with any other theory
or any other reasonable explanation. Now, there are two or three things
which in the hurry of speaking this morning—perhaps you thought I
had not hurried, but speaking rapidly, they were inadvertently passed
by—little things, but I want to speak of them before I pass on. Miss
Lizzie was ironing downstairs, and there cannot be any question about
that. Bridget says so and you recollect the testimony of Miss Russell
and Mrs. Holmes, that that morning when they were clearing up they
found the handkerchiefs that she had ironed in part, and the sprinkled
ones were carried upstairs and put away separately by themselves, a
dozen or more. You see that it is genuine; it is not a fiction. It is
really one of those little things that help to establish the truth. I
must also in this connection speak of Mr. Medley’s testimony, because
the commonwealth relied upon Mr. Medley to make the examination, as
he said, of the dust in the barn, to show you that Miss Lizzie could
not have walked on the upper floor. Now, if you could be sure of that
there would be some test in it. If you did not see a track through
freshly fallen snow you would say no person had passed there. It would
be a little more doubtful about walking on a floor, but when you find
a detective looking after this thing, you begin to suspect that he may
be in error, and when you find as you do by the testimony, a half a
dozen or more people up there in that barn walking around before Mr.
Medley got there at all, as it was proved upon the testimony there had
been when he got there, and when he met Mr. Fleet and where he met him,
between the gateway and the back steps, and then went directly into the
house, Sawyer being at the door, you see how unreliable his testimony
is. Well, then, you have the testimony of Mr. Clarkson and you have
that of Mr. Manning and Mr. Stevens and the two boys that called
themselves “Me and Brown,” Barlowe and Brown. Now, those boys, like
all boys, just the same as you and I when we were boys, wanted to go
upstairs, to look at things about there and stay as long as they could,
and it appears they went there and were out in that barn before Mr.
Medley came there. He went into the house and talked with Miss Lizzie
and was some minutes in the house before he went to the barn. So when
he got there there had been people all about there, and those people
give their testimony in such a way as to carry the conviction of truth
in their statement, so that you find them up there and walking around
in the very place where Mr. Medley went to look, and it shows you that
Mr. Medley must have been in error. His detection was not so sure as
he thought. He was mistaken about it, consequently while he may have
honestly meant what he said, I do not call that in question for the
time being, but I want to say that that is not anything which you can
depend upon under these circumstances, and when you find him confronted
with three or four other witnesses, John Donnelly and the boys and
Clarkson, there can be no question that Mr. Medley is mistaken, so that
we have in addition to the positive proof that Miss Lizzie went to the
barn, to which I called your attention this morning, the affirmation of
these other witnesses that they were there, and Mr. Medley finds nobody
to support him.
Why, do you not all think with me of what a blessed Providence it was
that interfered with that girl, so that as she walked about that house,
passing from the sitting room into the dining room and hall, she did
not step on some of the blood and have it on her shoes? Anybody else,
according to the theory of the government, could have stepped on that
blood and have bloody shoes, but if Lizzie had walked there just the
same as any other person innocently, and there had been so much as a
pin head stain upon one of her shoes, it would have led her to the
severest penalty on their theory. See within what close limitation we
walk in commonest things and see how close we come to precipitate of
danger when we find any part in the wrong. Why, upon the theory of the
government—no, it isn’t the theory of the government, for I really
do not know what it is, but the handleless hatchet down there in the
box, the theory being for the time, if it is a theory and is indulged,
that she ran down and put that through a course of washing, scraping
with ashes, etc., and threw it up in the box after breaking the handle
off, as claimed, and then got rid of the handle; they say that they
found it there, and put it right up into the box to which she directed
Bridget to go with the officers and find the hatchets and axes. Why
gentlemen, she is not a lunatic or an idiot. She is a great colossal
contriver of wrong and murder, shrewd, discriminating, far-seeing, with
premeditated malice aforethought, and planned all this thing. Well, she
did not plan so foolishly as that. She would not send officers to find
the very thing and in the very place where she had put it. She burned
no clothing that day. She put none away. They tell us nothing about
that with all the vigilance of their searches, and you know that the
officers say that when they went there first, and looked in that box
down cellar, they took out the two smaller hatchets that were on top.
Now, whatever the theory, or any theory of the government in regard to
that hatchet, you have got to assume she was down there and washed it
up and got it all clean beyond what science can do, and got the blood
out of it, and then broke off the handle, and went herself and took out
the other two hatchets so as to get this old one underneath, and then
she had it all covered with ashes, too. And when they found it that
Thursday afternoon it was all dry and covered with dust like the other.
They undertake to tell you it was coarser dust. Just see into what a
labyrinth of impossibilities and improbabilities they try to lead this
woman. Then she had to run upstairs, run up to her own room and make
a change, run down cellar and take care of herself, and take care of
the hatchets, upon their theory, run back again and get up there and
call Bridget—all in that short space of time. I said it was morally
and physically impossible. You may find her not guilty, if that be your
judgment, for two reasons. One because you know that it has not been
proven. And the court will tell you that if, when you reach that point
in your decision, you are not satisfied and convinced as reasonable
men, beyond a reasonable doubt, no matter what your suspicions may be
and what you may think about it otherwise, you have but one duty to
perform and one that is safe to you to render in this case.
You may have heretofore thought things looked dark for her. You
may have said, “If they can come into the court and show all the
things I have seen in the newspapers, gossip and rumor and report,
I might feel that I ought to, but now that I find the government’s
case only the thing that it is, insufficient, weak, contradictory,
critical, lame, why, I have nothing else to do in my conscience but
to say to Massachusetts, we have this woman in charge, you have not
proved it against her, we still keep charge of her, and we say to
you, you have not proven this against her and she is not guilty.”
But there is another ground. If, when you see through this evidence,
you are satisfied again, convinced—which is more—you are convinced
affirmatively that the woman is innocent, that you are entitled to
say, “Not guilty,” and you are bound so to speak. It is rare that the
defendant goes so far as to prove her innocence. It is not a task that
is set before her. But I dare to speak to you upon that branch in this
case with full confidence. Look at it for a period. Take the facts
as they are, and I would not misrepresent or belittle any of them. I
have not knowingly omitted any of them, for a purpose of benefit to
the defendant. Take them as they are. What is there to prove to you
absolutely, as sensible men, the innocence of this defendant? You go
and search some other man’s house and let me alone. Search somebody
else, I think he had some trouble with my father: that would be the
policy of such a defendant. What was her conduct? Uniformly, openly
frank every time, shutting all the doors against any person that might
be put under this foul suspicion. Why, you say, shutting them against
herself. Yes, it was the impulse, the outcome of an honest woman. Were
she a villain and a rascal, she would have done as villains and rascals
do. There was her uncle, John Morse, suspected as you heard, followed
up, inquired about, and she is asked and she said, no, he did not do
it. He went away from the house this morning at nine o’clock. Some
one said Bridget did it. Now there were but two persons around that
house as we now find out, so far as we can locate anybody, and the
busy finger was pointed at Bridget Sullivan—Bridget Sullivan, only an
Irish girl, working in the family, working for her weekly pay, been
faithful to them, been there two years and nine months, lived happily
and peacefully with them and they have had no trouble, and Lizzie spoke
out right determinedly, as you know, and promptly: Why, Bridget did not
do it. Then somebody said: Why, the Portuguese on the farm. No, says
Lizzie, he is not a Portuguese; he is a Swede, and my father has not
any men that ever worked for him that would do that to him. Not Alfred
Johnson that worked for them, not Mr. Eddy, another farmer that worked
for them, no assistant—I cannot believe it of any of them.
How do you account for that except in one way? She was virtually, if
she was a criminal, virtually putting everybody away from suspicion and
leaving herself to stand as the only one to whom all would turn their
eyes. Suppose she had been wicked and designing and Bridget as innocent
as Bridget is to-day. Suppose Lizzie had undertaken to tell something
that would involve Bridget, would it not have been easy? And it might
have been. Then if she had led the way in treachery and repeated crime
Lizzie might have led Bridget right into the toils in which she herself
became involved to the relief of Bridget by her statement that Bridget
is not to be suspected. It is not every human being who can stand that
strain. It is not every man that has strength of purpose and purity of
mind.
Did she ever stand in the way, or her sister likewise? Go, search
everything, we will come and help you open everything. We will join
you; find out all you can. Do all you want to here. Never a sign of
reluctance. Never an intimation of objection is the unanimous testimony
of everybody that went there. They say she was cool. Thank the Lord
there was enough left of her so that she could be cool under the
visitations of gentlemen who flocked there by the score. Her clothes,
her dress, her unmade dress, her shoes, her stockings, everything,
her absolute freedom from the marks of the crime, her readiness to do
anything that was wanted, and then that scene of Saturday night which
transcends all in exhibition of innocence. There has been that woman
shut up in that house, the premises crowded by the police. She was
virtually under arrest. She could almost feel the pressure of a hand
upon her arm, and in that house on that Saturday night were the mayor
and city marshal of Fall River, and in the parlor they called her, her
sister and uncle together, and then they began that advising them—now
notice how it was done, for this is an essential part of their case,
they advised them that the family had better remain in the house.
Miss Lizzie says, why? Well, the mayor says, Mr. Morse, perhaps, can
tell you. It was something that occurred down street last night, and
then comes the question that from there Morse went down street and had
some trouble. Now, that seemed to indicate that Mr. Morse was probably
under suspicion, and Lizzie spoke at once as they spoke of putting
officers around the house and said, “Why, is there anybody in this
house suspected?” and the mayor says, “I regret to say, Miss Borden,
that you are suspected.” Then she says, “I am ready to go now, or at
any time.”
Gentlemen, murderers do not talk that way. Criminals are not so
situated as to have committed this great and monstrous wrong and then
have had that superb quietness of spirit and that confident feeling
that wrong had been done her in the charge that is made, and the
assurance within herself that, God knowing it, she is free and pure.
Gentlemen, as you look upon her you will pass your judgment that she
is not insane. To find her guilty you must believe she is a fiend.
Does she look it? As she sat here these long, weary days and moved in
and out before you have you seen anything that shows the lack of human
feeling and womanly bearing. A word more. There must be no mistake,
gentlemen. That would be irreparable. There can be but one mistake
which nobody can ever right, and for which there can never be any
atonement to her. If you make a mistake as against the commonwealth
that is something which the future may correct, but if you go wrong
as to this woman now, and go to the length of saying that she is
guilty, and you have done it upon insufficient grounds and the improper
findings, the case and the woman have gone beyond your control, and, so
far as you can know, beyond the power of man. To condemn her as guilty
of the diabolical crimes that have been described to you, when there
remains any reasonable doubt in the minds of any one of you of the true
verdict, would be so deplorable an evil that the tongue can never speak
its wickedness. We say, the crier utters it, God save the commonwealth
of Massachusetts, and the prayer is heard in the prosperity of the old
bay state, but little it amounts to if we hear some one pray to God
for his guidance of the old commonwealth that when we have a prisoner
in charge we forget that we can do a good deal toward saving the
commonwealth and all her people. It will be little worth preserving if
the innocent are to be executed and one calamity and wrong step fast
upon the heels of another, and that, too, under the forms of law made
as well to shield the innocent as to punish the guilty.
Do I plead for her sister? No. Do I plead for Lizzie Andrew Borden
herself? Yes. I ask you to consider her, to put her into the scale
as a woman among us all, to say as you have her in charge to the
commonwealth which you represent, it is not just to hold her a minute
longer, and pleading for her I plead for you and myself and all of us
that the verdict you shall register in this most important case shall
not only command your approval now, unqualified and beyond reasonable
doubt, but shall stand sanctioned and commended by the people
everywhere in the world, who are listening by the telegraphic wire to
know what is the outcome as to her.
She is not without sympathy in this world. She is not having people by
day and by night thinking it is not to be found out in Massachusetts
that so great a wrong against her can be committed as to condemn
her upon the evidence that has been offered. Gentlemen, with great
weariness on your part, but with abundant patience and intelligence and
care, you have listened to what I have had to offer. So far as you are
concerned, it is the last word of the defendant to you. Take it: take
care of her as you have, and give us promptly your verdict not guilty,
that she may go home and be Lizzie Andrew Borden of Fall River in that
blood-stained and wrecked home where she has passed her life so many
years.