CHAPTER XXXI.

District Attorney Knowlton’s Plea.

Hosea M. Knowlton, attorney for the State, spoke as follows: May it

please your honors, Mr. Foreman and you, gentlemen of the jury—Upon

one common ground in this case all human men can stand together.

However we may differ about many of the issues in this trial, there can

be no doubt, and I do not disguise my full appreciation of the fact,

that it is a most heartrending case. Whether we consider the tragedy

that we are trying and the circumstances that surround it, the charge

that followed it, the necessary course of the trial that has been had

before you, the difficult and painful duty of the counsel upon both

sides of the case, or the duty that shall finally be committed to your

charge, there is that in it all which lacerates the heart strings of

humanity. It was an incredible crime, incredible but for the cold and

merciful facts which confront and defeat that incredulity.

There is that in the tidings of a murder that thrills the human heart

to its depths. When the word passes from lip to lip and from mouth to

mouth that a human life has been taken by an assassin, the stoutest

hearts stop beating, lips pale and cheeks blanch, strong men grow pale

with the terror of the unknown and mysterious, and if that be so with

what I may, perhaps, by comparison call an ordinary assassination, what

were the feelings that overpowered the community when the news of this

tragedy was spread by the lightning to the ends of the world? Nay,

gentlemen, I need not ask you to imagine it. You were a part of the

community. It came to you in your daily avocations, it sent a thrill

through your beings and you felt that life was not secure. Every man

turned detective. Every act and fact and thought that occurred to the

thousand, to the million men all over the United States, was spread

abroad and furnished and given for the identification of the criminal,

and still it remained an impenetrable mystery. My distinguished friend

says, Who could have done it? The answer would have been, nobody could

have done it. If you had read the account of these cold and heartless

facts in any tale of fiction before this thing had happened, would you

not have said, Mr. Foreman—you would have said, That will do for a

story, but such things never happen.

In the midst of the largest city of this county, in the midst of his

household, surrounded by people and houses and teams and civilization,

in the midst of the day, right in that household, while they were

attending to their household duties in the midst of their families, an

aged man and an aged woman are suddenly and brutally assassinated. It

was a terrible crime. It is an impossible crime. But it was committed.

And very much, very much, Mr. Foreman, of the difficulty of solving

this awful tragedy starts from the very impossibility of the thing

itself. Set any human being you can think of, put any degraded man or

woman you ever heard of at the bar, and say to them, “You did this

thing,” and it would seem incredible. And yet it was done; it was done.

And I am bound to say, Mr. Foreman, and I say it out of a full heart,

that it is scarcely more credible to believe the charge that followed

the crime. I would not for one moment lose sight of the incredibility

of that charge, nor ask you to believe it, unless you find it supported

by facts that you cannot explain or deny. The prisoner at the bar is

a woman, and a christian woman, as the expression is used. It is no

ordinary criminal that we are trying to-day. It is one of the rank of

lady, the equal of your wife and mine, of your friends and mine, of

whom such things had never been suspected or dreamed before. I hope

I may never forget nor in anything that I say here to-day lose sight

of the terrible significance of that fact. We are trying a crime that

would have been deemed impossible but for the fact that it was, and

are charging with the commission of it a woman whom we would have

believed incapable of doing it but for the evidence that it is my duty,

my painful duty, to call to your attention. But I beg you to observe,

Mr. Foreman and gentlemen, that you cannot dispose of the case upon

that consideration. Alas, that it is so! But no station in life is a

pledge or a security against the commission of crime, and we all know

it. Those who are intrusted with the most precious savings of the widow

and the orphan, who stand in the community as towers of strength and

fidelity, suddenly fall, and their wreck involves the ruin of many

happy homes. They were christian men, they were devout men, they were

members of some christian church, they had every inducement around them

to preserve the lives that they were supposed to be living, and yet,

when the crash came, it was found that they were rotten to the core.

Nay, Mr. Foreman, those who are installed with the sacred robes of the

church are not exempt from the lot of humanity. Time and again have we

been grieved to learn, pained to find, that those who are set up to

teach us the way of correct life have been found themselves to be foul

as hell inside. Is youth a protection against crime. It is a matter

of the history of the commonwealth that a boy of tender years was the

most brutal, the most unrelenting, the most cruel, the most fiendish

murderer that the commonwealth ever knew. Is sex a protection to crime?

Is it not a matter of common knowledge that within the remembrance of

every man I am talking to, a woman has been found who murdered a whole

cart load of relatives for the sake of obtaining a miserable pittance

of a fortune. Ah, gentlemen, I do not underestimate, I do not speak

lightly of the strength of a christian character. Far be it from me to

join in the sneers which are sometimes thoughtlessly indulged in that a

man who is a good Christian is not therefore a good man. Most of them

are. Many times all of them are. But they are all sons of Adam and Eve.

They fall because they are human. They fall all at once because they

have never been shown to the light, and their fall is all the greater

because their outward lives have been pure before. I do not forget what

a bulwark it is to you and me, Mr. Foreman, that we have heretofore

borne a reputation that is above the suspicion of crimes and felonies.

It is sometimes the only refuge of a man put in straits. But nobody is

beyond the rank of men. Else would it not have been said even by the

disciples themselves, “Lead not thy servant into presumptuous sins.”

It was not ordained by the Saviour that the weak and the trembling and

the wicked and the easily turned only should utter the prayer, lead

us not into temptation. We are none of us secure. Have you led, sir,

an honorable, an upright life? Thank your Heavenly Father that the

temptations have not been too strong for you. Have you, sir, never been

guilty of heinous crime? Is it your strength of character or is it your

fortune that you have been able to resist what has been brought against

you? Mr. Foreman, let me not be misunderstood. Not for one moment would

I urge that because a man or a woman has led an upright and devout

life that therefore there should be any reason for suspecting him or

her of a crime. On the contrary, it is a buttress to the foundation,

to the presumption of innocence with which we start to try anybody.

I am obliged to tread now upon a more delicate ground. The prisoner

is a woman, one of that sex that all high-minded men revere, that all

generous men love, that all wise men acknowledge their indebtedness to.

It is hard, it

[Illustration: HOSEA M. KNOWLTON.]

is hard, Mr. Foreman and gentlemen, to conceive that woman can be

guilty of crime. It is not a pleasant thing to reflect upon. But I

am obliged to say what strikes the justice of every man to whom I am

talking, that while we revere the sex, while we show our courtesies to

them, they are human like unto us. They are no better than we; they are

no worse than we. If they lack in strength and coarseness and vigor,

they make up for it in cunning, in dispatch, in celerity, in ferocity.

If their loves are stronger and more enduring than those of men, am I

saying too much that, on the other hand, their hates are more undying,

more unyielding, more persistent? We must face this case as men, not

as gallants. You will be slow to believe it is within the capacity of

a man to have done it. But it was done. You will be slower to believe

that it was within the capacity of a woman to have done it, and I

should not count you men if you did not, but it was done. It was done

for a purpose. It was done by hatred. But who did it? You have been

educated to believe, you are proud to recognize your loyalty, your

fealty to the sex. Gentlemen, that consideration has no place under

the oath you have taken. We are to find the facts. I am said to be

impervious to criticism, but those who have said one thing of me may

have the consolation of knowing that the shaft has struck home. When it

has been said of me that in the trial of this cause, in the prosecution

of this case, there entered into it anything but the spirit of duty,

anything like a spirit of revenge, any unworthy motives like ambition

or personal glory, if they had known how I shrank from this horrible

duty, those slanderous tongues would never have uttered those words.

Gentlemen, it is the saddest duty of my life—it is the saddest duty

of my life. Gladly would I have shrunk from it if I could have done

so and been a man. Gladly would I have yielded the office with which

I have been intrusted by the votes of this district if I could have

done so honorably. And if now any word I say, any evidence I state, any

inference I draw, shall be done with any purpose or intent to do that

woman an injustice, may my right hand wither and my tongue cleave to

the roof of my mouth. With that spirit, gentlemen, let me ask you to

enter upon this case. It was a crime that may well challenge your most

sober and sacred attention. That aged man, that aged woman, had gone

by the noonday of their lives. They had borne the burden and heat of

the day. They had accumulated a competency which they felt would carry

them through the waning years of their lives, and hand and hand they

expected to go down to the sunset of their days in quiet and happiness.

But for that crime they would be enjoying the air of this day. But

for that assassin many years of their life, like yours, I hope, sir,

would have been before them, when the cares of life were past, when

the anxieties of their daily avocation had ceased to trouble them, and

together they would have gone down the hill of life serene in an old

age that was happy because the happiness had been earned by a life

of fidelity and toil. Over those bodies we stand, Mr. Foreman. We

sometimes forget the past. Over those bodies we stand, and we say to

ourselves, is it possible that this crime cannot be discovered. You

are standing, as has been suggested, in the presence of death itself.

It is only what comes hereafter, but it is the double death that comes

before. There is a place—it is the chamber of death—where all these

personal animosities, passions and prejudices have no room, where all

matters of sentiment are one side, where nothing but the truth, the

naked truth, finds room and lodgment. In that spirit I adjure you to

enter upon the trial of this case. It is the most solemn duty of your

lives. We have brought before you as fully and frankly as we could,

every witness whom we thought had any knowledge of any surrounding of

this transaction, I do not know of one that has been kept back.

They were not merely the officers of the police. They were the domestic

of that establishment, the tried and faithful servant, and, for aught

that I know or have heard, the friend of these girls to-day. They

were the physician who was the first one called on the discovery of

the tragedy. They are the faithful friends and companions of this

defendant. And we have called them all before you and listened to

what they had to say, whether it was for her or against her. Nay, we

called the relative himself and had his story of what he knew in the

matter, and all the people who by any possibility could have known

anything about this thing we have tried to produce to you to tell all

that they could tell. Then there came another class of witnesses, if

I may classify them. As soon as this crime was discovered it became,

Mr. Foreman, did it not, the duty of those who are intrusted with the

detection of crime to take such measures as they thought were proper

for the discovery of the criminal. They are officers of the police.

When you go home, sir, to your family, after this long agony is over,

and a crime has been committed that approaches this in magnitude, or

any crime whatever, where will you go? to whom will you appeal? on

whom will you rely? Upon the very men that my distinguished friend

has seen fit by direction to criticise as interested in this case. He

put a question the other day which I forgave him for because it came

in heat, but it illustrates what I am saying—saying to one of these

officers, “speaking to you not as a police officer but as a man.” It

is true they are police officers, but they are men, too. They are

to find out what the truth of it is. They made many mistakes. The

crime was beyond the experience of any man in this country or in this

world; what wonder that they did? They left many things undone that

they might have done; what wonder that they did? It was beyond the

scope of any men to grasp in its entirety at that time. But honestly,

faithfully, as thoroughly as God had given them ability, they pursued

the various avenues by which they thought they might find the criminal.

My distinguished friend has not charged in words, and it is not true

that their energies have been bent to this unfortunate prisoner. It

was in evidence that many things were followed up, that many trails

were pursued, and I am not permitted even to tell you how many men were

followed with the thought that perhaps they had something to do with

this crime, how many towns and cities were investigated, and how many

people were watched and followed, how many trails have been pursued.

Don’t you suppose, Mr. Foreman, they would be glad to-day if it could

be found that this woman did not do this thing? Is there a man so base

in all this world that hopes she did it, that wants to believe she did

it, that tries to believe she did it? Nay, nay, Mr. Foreman. All the

evidence in this case that is entitled to great weight from the police

officers came before (as I shall show you by and by) any suspicion came

to them that she was connected with it. And it was only after they had

investigated the facts, had gotten her stories and put them together,

that the conviction forced itself upon them, as perhaps it may upon

you, that there is no better explanation which will answer the facts

that cannot be denied.

A blue coat does not make a man any better; it ought not to make him

any worse. They are men; Mr. Fleet is a man, Mr. Mullaly is a man,

Mr. Medley is a man, and they are not to be stood up in a row and

characterized as good or bad because they are officers, but upon what

you think of them as men. There is another thing that troubles my

friends—I now include the learned advocate who opened this case as

well as the distinguished counsel who closed it—and which perhaps

from your ordinary and accustomed channel of thought may have troubled

you. I speak of it frankly, for many honest men have been heard to

say—I have heard many an honest man say, that he could not believe

circumstantial evidence. And I respect the honesty of the man who says

it: But, gentlemen, the crime we are trying is a crime of an assassin.

It is the work of one who does his foul deeds beyond the sight and

hearing of men. All it means is this: That when one sees the crime

committed or one hears the crime committed then the testimony of him

that sees or hears is the testimony of a witness who saw it or heard it

and is direct evidence. All other evidence is circumstantial evidence.

That is the exact distinction. Did you ever hear of a murderer getting

a witness to his work who could see it or hear it? Murder is the work

of stealth and craft in which there are not only no witnesses, but

the traces are attempted to be obliterated. What is called sometimes

circumstantial evidence is nothing in the world but that presumption

of circumstances, it may be one or fifty. There isn’t any chain

about it: the word “chain” is a misnomer as applied to it; it is the

presentation of circumstances from which one is irresistibly driven

to the conclusion that crime has been committed. Talk about a chain

of circumstances! When that solitary man had lived on this island for

twenty years and believed that he was the only human being there and

that the cannibals and savages that lived around him had not found him

nor had not come to his island, he walked out one day on the beach, and

there he saw the fresh print in the sand of a naked foot.

He had no lawyer to tell him that was nothing but a circumstance. He

had no distinguished counsel to urge upon his fears that there was no

chain about that thing which led him to a conclusion. His heart beat

fast, his knees shook beneath him, he fell to the ground in fright,

because Robinson Crusoe knew when he saw that circumstance that man had

been there that was not himself. It was circumstantial evidence; it was

nothing but circumstantial evidence, but it satisfied him. It is not a

question of circumstantial evidence, Mr. Foreman; it is a question of

the sufficiency of circumstantial evidence. It is like the refuse that

floats upon the surface of the stream. You stand upon the banks of the

river and you see a chip go by; that is only a circumstance. You see

another chip go by. That is another circumstance. You see another chip

in front of you going the other way. That is only another circumstance.

By and by you see a hundred in the great body of the stream, all moving

one way, and a dozen or two in this little eddy in front of you going

the other way. The chain is not complete, some of the chips go up the

stream; but you would not have any doubt, you would not hesitate for

a moment, Mr. Foreman, to say that you knew which way the current of

that river was, and yet you have not put your hand in the water, and

yet have only seen things from which you inferred it, and even the

things themselves did not go the same way. But you had the wit and the

sense and the human and common experience to observe that those that

went the other way could be explained, and the great body of them went

that way. Mr. Foreman, there have been very few cases of assassination

in which there was direct testimony. My learned friend, the counsel,

who opened this case, has culled out from the billion of cases that

have been tried by juries in English-speaking countries—I think I do

not exaggerate—from the thousand million of cases which have been

tried upon circumstantial evidence in English-speaking countries, an

instance here and an instance there where it was found, perhaps, that

there was a mistake; and even those cases, with one single exception

(and in that case the man never got hanged) are open to great doubt and

discredit. But every lawyer knows, every man who is accustomed to the

trying of cases is familiar with the fact that the testimony of men is

wrong a hundred times where facts are wrong once. What impresses one as

the remarkable and distinguishing feature of this case is the gradual

discovery of the surprising fact that these two people did not come to

their death at the same time. I have no doubt that each one of you, as

you heard the stories as they came flashed over the wires, had the idea

that was common to everybody who did not know anything about it, and

there was nobody that did, that some man had come in, rushed through

the house, killed the old gentleman, rushed upstairs and killed the

old lady, and then had made his escape. But it was found that that was

not so. It has been proved so conclusively that counsel do not dispute

the proposition. It is scarcely worth while for me to recapitulate the

evidence. I will not do it. Mr. Wixon, Mr. Pettee, who is not in any

way connected with the government and holds no government office—came

in there and made their explanation, and as Dr. Dedrick put it, it

appeared to him—for he is a physician of experience, that the deaths

were several hours apart. Dr. Dolan examined more carefully the blood

and the wounds and the head, and he thought there was a difference of

from an hour to an hour and a half.

But, Gentlemen, there is within us, provided by the Almighty, a clock

by which the eye of science can tell the time. When a man falls

into the water and drowns, his watch stops and fixes the time when

he drowns; anybody can tell that. But when the human life stops, if

precautionary measures are taken, as were taken in this case, a man who

is skilled in the examination of these things can tell as accurately

the relative time of the death of that man as we can tell the time

by that clock up there. And so we proved—ah, it was a suspicion born

of consciousness and not of anything we said in this case when it was

suggested that we were trying to show the poverty of the mode of her

life here; there never has been a word of that on our side of the case;

my learned associate did not even hint that we were going to claim

there was anything mean or poverty-stricken in this family, and it

never was said until my distinguished friend saw fit to defend that

family from what never was charged. But for the purpose of scientific

investigation which was necessary, we proved—and for no other purpose

whatever—what was the breakfast of that family that morning, and

that the members of it sat down and partook together. It was a good

breakfast, it was the ordinary New England breakfast, and nobody has

said the contrary. Do not let me be misunderstood for one single moment

in this case. And for that purpose we showed you that these people sat

down to breakfast at from seven to quarter past seven, and finished

from half past seven to quarter of eight, and ate together and ate at

the same time. They lived their lives out prematurely cut off by the

hand of the assassin: their bodies lay upon the floor. Their stomachs

were taken out, digestion stopped when they stopped, and were sent

to the eminent, that scientific, that honest, that utterly fair man,

Prof. Wood, whom my learned friends will join with me in saying is

the most honest expert there is in Massachusetts to-day. He alone was

able to determine accurately the time of their death, assuming that

digestion went on normally within them, and he says that in all human

probability the time of her death preceded his by an hour and a half;

it might possibly have been a half hour less; it might possibly have

been a half hour more: Singularly enough, science is corroborated by

the facts. Singularly enough, everything fits into that proposition.

Andrew Jackson Borden probably never heard the clock strike 11 as it

pealed forth from the tower of city hall; and she was found dead with

the implement with which she had been engaged in dusting the rooms at

her head and close by her death. She was stricken down while she was

in that morning work in which she was engaged the last time anybody

saw her. And all the evidence in the case points to the irresistible

conviction that when Andrew Borden was down at his accustomed place

in the bank of Mr. Abraham Hart, the faithful wife he had left at

home was prone in death in the chamber of the house he had left her

in. At half-past nine, if we are to believe the consensus of all this

testimony, the assassin met her in that room and put an end to her

innocent old life.

Gentlemen, that is a tremendous fact. It is a controlling fact in

this case. It is the key of the case. Why do I say that? Because the

murderer of this man was the murderer of Mrs. Borden. It was the malice

against Mrs. Borden that inspired the assassin. It was Mrs. Borden

whose life that wicked person sought, and all the motive that we have

to consider, all we have to say about this case, bears on her. It is

a tremendous fact for another thing, a significant fact for another

thing. We are driven to the alternative of finding that there was a

human being who had the unparalleled audacity to penetrate that house

when the entire family were in and about it, so far as he knew, to

pursue his murderers with a deadly weapon in his hand, to the furthest

corner of the house, and there to select an innocent and unoffending

old lady for his first victim, and then lie in wait until the family

should, all get together an hour and a half later that he might kill

the other one.

This murderer was no fool: he was obedient to craft and cunning. He

could not forsee that Bridget would go upstairs. He could not forsee

that Lizzie would go to the barn. He might have known from the habits

of Andrew Borden that he would come back, but it would be back to a

house full of people—Morse might come at any time: he knew not when

Emma might come. He was waiting for the family to assemble, this man

who committed this deed. It was no sudden act of a man coming in and

out. It was the act of a person who spent the forenoon in this domestic

establishment, killing the woman at her early work and waiting till the

man returned for his noon-day meal in order that he could be killed

when everybody would be likely to be around him. It is a tremendous

fact, Mr. Foreman. It appears in this case from the beginning to end.

She had not an enemy in the world. You and I sometimes have our jars

and discords. Andrew J. Borden had had his little petty quarrels with

his tenants, nothing out of the ordinary, but Mrs. Abby Durfee Borden

had not an enemy in all the world. There she lay bleeding, dead, prone

by the hand of an assassin. Somebody went up there to kill her. In all

this universe there could not be found a person who could have had any

motive to do it.

We must now go into this establishment and see what manner of family

this was. It is said that there is a skeleton in the household of every

man, but the Borden skeleton—if there was one—was fairly well locked

up from view. They were a close-mouthed family. They did not parade

their difficulties. Last of all would you expect they would tell the

domestic in the kitchen, which is the whole tower of strength of the

defense, and yet, Mr. Foreman, there was a skeleton in the closet of

that house which was not adequate to this matter—O, no, not adequate

to this thing. There is not anything in human nature that is adequate

to this thing—remember that. But there was a skeleton of which we

have seen the grinning eyeballs and the dangling limbs. It is useless

to tell you that there was peace and harmony in that family. We know

better. We know better. The remark that was made to Mrs. Gifford, the

cloakmaker, was not a petulant outburst, such as might come and go.

That correction of Mr. Fleet, at the very moment the poor woman who

had reared that girl lay dead within ten feet of her voice, was not

merely accidental. It went down deep into the springs of human nature.

Lizzie Borden had never known her mother. She was not three years

old when that woman passed away, and her youthful lips had scarcely

learned to pronounce the tender word mamma, and no picture of her lay

in the girl’s mind. And yet she had a mother—she had a mother. Before

she was old enough to go to school, before she arrived at the age of

five years, this woman, the choice of her father, the companion of her

father, who had lost and mourned and loved again, had come in and had

done her duty by that girl and had reared her, had stood in all the

attitudes which characterize the tenderest of all human relations.

Through all her childhood’s sicknesses that woman had cared for her.

When she came in weary with her sports, feeble and tired, it was on her

breast that girl had sunk as have our children on the breast of their

mothers. She had been her mother, faithful persevering, and had brought

her up to be at least an honorable and worthy woman in appearance and

manner.

This girl owed everything to her. Mrs. Borden was the only mother

she had ever known, and she had given to this girl her mother’s love

and had given her this love when a child when it was not her own and

she had not gone through the pains of childbirth, because it was her

husband’s daughter. And then a quarrel; what a quarrel. What a quarrel,

Mr. Foreman. A man worth more than a quarter of a million of dollars,

wants to give his wife, his faithful wife who has served him thirty

years for her board and clothes, who has done his work, who has kept

his house, who has reared his children, wants to buy and get with her

the interest in a little homestead where her sister lives.

How wicked to have found fault with it. How petty to have found fault

with it. Nay, if it was a man sitting in that dock instead of a

woman, I would characterize it in more opprobrious terms than those.

I trust that in none of the discussion that I engage in to-day shall

I forget the courtesy due from a man to a woman; and although it is

my horrible and painful duty to point to the fact of this woman being

a murderess, I trust I shall not forget that she is a woman, and I

hope I never have. And she repudiated the title that that woman should

have had from her. Did you ever hear of such a case as that? It was

a living insult to that woman, a living expression of contempt, and

that woman repeated it day in and day out, saying to her, as Emma has

said, you are not interested in us. You have worked round our father

and have got a little miserable pittance of $1,500 out of him, and

you shall be my mother no more. Am I exaggerating this thing? She

kept her own counsel. Bridget did not know anything about it. She was

in the kitchen. This woman never betrayed her feelings except when

some one else tried to make her call her mother, and then her temper

broke forth. Living or dead, no person should use that word mother to

that poor woman unchallenged by Lizzie Borden. She had left it off

herself; all through her childhood days, all through her young life

Mrs. Borden had been a mother to her as is the mother of every other

child to its offspring, and the time comes when they still live in the

same house and this child will no longer call her by that name. Mr.

Foreman, it means much. It means much. Why does it mean much? They

did not eat together. Bridget says so. My distinguished friend tried

to get her to take it back, and she did partly. The woman would have

taken most anything back under that cross-examination, but this is her

testimony: “That is so, they always ate together.” “Yes, they always

ate in the same dining-room.” Bridget is going to have her own way yet.

But I do not put it on Bridget. I put it on Lizzie herself. When Mrs.

Gifford spoke to her, talking about her mother, she said, “Don’t say

mother to me.”—that mother who had reared her and was her father’s

companion under the roof with whom she was then living, whose household

she shared, to whom every debt of gratitude was due and whom she had

repudiated as her mother, she could not find the heart to say to this

cloakmaker was her mother, for I believe that you believe this story

is true—“she is a mean, good for nothing old thing.” Nay, that is not

all—“We do not have much to do with her. I stay in my room most of the

time.”

Is not that so? Uncle John Morse came to visit them, stayed over night,

and during the afternoon and evening, and next morning, and never saw

Lizzie at all—her own uncle. “Why, you come down to your meals?” said

Mrs. Gifford, and Lizzie said, “Yes, but we don’t eat with them if

we can help it.” I heard what Miss Emma said Friday, and I could but

admire the loyalty and fidelity of that unfortunate girl to her still

more unfortunate sister. I could not find it in my heart to ask her

many questions. She was in the most desperate strait that any innocent

woman could be in, her next of kin, her only sister, stood in peril,

and she must come to the rescue. She faintly tells us the relations

in the family were peaceful, but we sadly know they were not. But

you will say, you will fairly say, Mr. Foreman—let me not underrate

this thing one atom—you will fairly say, what is that? I don’t know.

I don’t know how deep this cancer had eaten in. It makes but little

show on the surface. A woman can preserve her appearance of health

and strength even when the roots of this foul disease have gone and

wound clear around her heart and vital organs. This was a cancer. It

was an interruption of what should have been the natural agreeable

relations between mother and daughter, a quarrel about property, not

her property, but her father’s, and property that he alone had the

right to dispose of. A man does not surrender his rights to his own

until he is dead, and not even then if he chooses to make a will. She

could not brook that that woman should have influence enough over her

father to let him procure the little remnant of her own property that

had fallen to her from her own folks. She had repudiated the title of

mother. She had lived with her in hatred. She had gone on increasing

in that hatred until we do not know, we can only guess, how far that

sore had festered, how far the blood in that family had been poisoned

by the misfortune of these unfortunate relations between them. I come

back to that poor woman lying prone, as has been described, in the

parlor. It is wicked to have to say it, it is wicked to have to say

it, but, gentlemen, there is no escape from the truth. Had she an

enemy in all the world? She had one. Was anybody in the world to be

benefitted by her taking away? There was one. There was one. It is hard

to believe that mere property would have influenced this belief. We are

not obliged to, although it appears that property was that which made

or broke the relations of that family, and a small amount of property,

too. But there was one woman in the world who believed that that dead

woman stood between her and her father, and was the enemy of her and

the friend of her father, and between whom there had grown up that

feeling that prevented her from giving her the title that the ordinary

instincts of decency would have entitled her to. Let us examine the

wounds upon that woman. So we look at the skull and we look at these

wounds, and what do we read there? We know afterwards, by another

examination downstairs, that no thief did this thing; there was no

object of plunder. We are spared the suspicion that any base animal

purposes had to do with this crime. No, Mr. Foreman, there was nothing

in these blows but hatred, but hatred, and a desire to kill. What sort

of blows were they? Some struck here at an angle, badly aimed; some

struck here in the neck, badly directed; some pattered on top of the

head and didn’t go through; some, where the skull was weaker, went

through. A great strong man would have taken a blow of that hatchet

and made an end of it. The hand that held the weapon was not the hand

of masculine strength. It was the hand of a person strong only in hate

and desire to kill. We have not proved anything yet, but we must take

things as they come, no matter where they lead us. It was not the work

of a man who, with a blow of that hatchet, could have smashed any part

of that skull, and whose unerring aim would have made no false blow or

false work. It was the indecisive blow of hatred, the weak, puttering,

badly aimed, nerveless blows—I forbear for the present to bring that

sentence to a conclusion, for I won’t do it until I am obliged to. I

won’t ask you, until I am obliged to, to listen to it. Now we must go

back and see what the circumstances of that crime were, for that is the

crime we are trying. We will come at the other one by and by, and see

how and when and why they happened. But now we are trying that crime,

the motive of that crime, the probable author of that crime, who could

have committed that crime, what sort of person committed that crime,

and why it was done. We find, Mr. Foreman, perhaps the most remarkable

house that you ever heard of. My distinguished friend has admitted so

many things that I am saved the necessity of arguing very much about

the circumstances surrounding the house. Everything was locked up.

Why, did you notice there was even the barbed wire at the bottom of

the fence as well as on the top and on the stringers? Everything was

shut up. It was the most zealously guarded house I ever heard of. The

cellar door was found locked by all the witnesses that examined it.

The barn door was locked at night and was kept locked all night and

opened in the morning, by the undisputed testimony of Bridget, whom

nobody has suggested or ventured to suggest has told anything more than

she knows in the case. The closet door, up to the head of the stairs,

was found locked by Mr. Fleet, and every time that he wanted to go in

there, or anybody else wanted to go in there, or Lizzie herself, she

furnished the keys that unlocked it. So that door was locked up. The

front door was a door which had been kept by a spring lock until that

day. The day before, when Dr. Bowen called, Bridget let him in by the

spring lock. That night, when Lizzie came home from her call on Miss

Russell, she let herself in by the spring lock. There isn’t an atom of

evidence that up to the time of this tragedy and when people began to

come in and out and upset the ordinary arrangements of that house, but

that the front door had always been kept by a spring lock and opened

in the morning. That morning it was not opened. It was that woman’s

business to open it, and she did not open it. She came down stairs and

went into the kitchen and went about her ordinary avocations, and by

and by, when Mr. Borden came home, he expected to find it unlocked,

because he tried his key to it and it wouldn’t fit, and he had to call

her attention to get in. And it was not only with the spring lock,

but with the bolt and with the lower lock (all three put together) as

people lock their door when they go to bed. Not the shutting in of an

assassin, as my distinguished friend has suggested, who was trying to

lock himself into the house, wild and improbable as that suggestion is.

Then the screen door. It may be, perhaps, as good a way to do as any

to refresh your memories about it as well as my own. I will go back

to the night before. That afternoon at 5 o’clock that screen door was

locked. That night when Bridget went out she locked the back door after

her. That night when she came back she found it locked, and she locked

up the screen door and the outside door and went upstairs to bed. No

chance for anybody to get in that day. The cellar was never unlocked

except on the Tuesday before—and I get this right from the testimony

because I do not want to argue anything but what is strictly correct.

The next morning Bridget got up at 6:15 and took in the milk and hooked

the screen door, unlocked the big door. A little while afterwards Mrs.

Borden came down, some time between 6:30 and 6:45, and went into the

sitting room. Mr. Borden came a little while afterwards, put his key on

the shelf, and unhooked the screen door and went into the yard, Bridget

remaining in the kitchen all the time. When he came back Bridget was

out of view of the screen door and don’t know whether he hooked it or

not.

But the next person that went out was Morse, and Mr. Morse tells

us—for he fills all that cavity up—Mr. Morse tells us that he

unhooked the screen door when he went out and Mr. Borden hooked it

after him, so that Mr. Borden must have hooked it when he came in.

Then, when Mr. Borden came in he hooked the screen door again, Bridget

being on guard in the kitchen all the time. Then Bridget went about

her work, eating her breakfast, clearing off the dining room dishes,

right there on guard in the kitchen all the time. By and by Lizzie came

down. Lizzie came into the kitchen, and her father had not then gone

and Bridget went out into the yard a few minutes, because she was sick,

too. She remained there in the yard for a moment or two, and when she

came to, Lizzie had got through her breakfast and had got back into the

other part of the house, she didn’t know where, and Mr. Borden had gone

off down town. When she came in she hooked the screen door. Up to that

time, Mr. Foreman, no human being could have got into that house. We

go further than that. By and by Bridget goes into the dining room to

clear off her dining room things, and sees Mrs. Borden dusting in and

out of the sitting room and the dining room, and Mrs. Borden directs

her, when she gets through her work, to wash the windows. Bridget goes

on about her work and Mrs. Borden disappears upstairs and Lizzie is out

of sight. She gets through with her work—and I call your particular

attention to this. She gets through with her work, Bridget does, goes

down cellar and gets her pail, comes back into the house, goes through

the house and puts down the windows and there isn’t anybody below the

stairs. Mr. Borden has long since gone down town. It must have been

about half past nine when Bridget went out to wash the windows, or

possibly a little later. She goes out of the screen door, which up

to that time no human being could have gone through. She has no more

than got out of doors than Lizzie, who had not been down stairs up to

that time, who had not gone away from the house, and, as she herself

says, saw her mother up there making the bed, or working in that guest

chamber, Lizzie comes to the back door to see if Bridget is fairly out

of doors, goes back into the house, and the murder is then done, as

Prof. Wood’s clock tells us.

Never mind the impossibility—I won’t argue that now, Mr.

Foreman—never mind the impossibility for the present of imagining a

person who was so familiar with the habits of that family, who was so

familiar with the interior of that house, who could forsee the things

that the family themselves could not see, who was so lost to all

human reason, who was so utterly criminal as to set out without any

motive whatever, as to have gone to that house that morning, to have

penetrated through the cordon of Bridget and Lizzie, and pursued that

poor woman up the stairs to her death, and then waited, weapon in hand

until the house should be filled up with people again that he might

complete his work.

I won’t discuss with you the impossibility of that thing for the

present. I will come back to the facts in this case and ask you whether

or not, at that time when the murder was done—up to that time there

had been no room for the assassin to come in, and after that time the

house was there alone with Lizzie and her murdered victim. The dead

body tells us another thing. It is a circumstance, but it is one of

those circumstances that cannot be cross-examined nor made fun of nor

talked out of court. The poor woman was standing when she was struck,

and fell with all the force of that two hundred pounds of flesh, flat

and prone dead on the floor. That jar could not have failed to have

been heard all over that house. They talk about its being a noisy

street. Why, Bridget tells us that she could hear the screen door

from her room when it slammed. She did hear Andrew Borden trying the

lock of the front door and went to let him in without the bell being

rung. Lizzie heard her down there letting her father in. Nothing

happened in one part of the house that wasn’t heard in the other. My

friend has spent some time in demonstrating, as he believes, to you,

the unlikelihood of her seeing her murdered mother as she went up and

down the stairs. But Lizzie Borden has ears as well as eyes. If she

was downstairs she was in the passageway of the assassin. If she was

upstairs there was nothing to separate her from the murder but the

thinness of that deal door that you saw. And do you believe for a

moment, Mr. Foreman and gentlemen, do you believe for a moment that

those blows could have been struck—that woman was struck in a way that

did not make her insensible—that she could have been struck without

groaning or screaming; that she could have fallen without a jar, a

woman as heavy as I am (I just use that by way of illustration), on

that floor, nearer than I am to you, sir, from Lizzie, and she know

nothing of it? If the facts I have put to you, Mr. Foreman, are true,

at the very instant when the murders were committed we leave Lizzie

and Mrs. Borden in the house together. Was she in the passageway when

this assassin came in? She alone knows. Was she in her room when that

heavy body fell to the floor? She alone knows. But we know, alas, we

know, Mr. Foreman, that when Bridget opened that screen door and went

out to wash the windows, after Mr. Borden had met his half-past nine

appointment at the bank, that she left in the house this poor woman

and the only enemy she had in the world. And there had been no more

chance, if there was any conceivable possibility existing to mankind

that anybody else got in than there would be of getting into this room

and you and I not seeing them. But that is not all. It is provided, as

I humbly and devoutly believe, by the divine justice itself, that no

matter how craftily murder is planned, there is always some point where

the skill and cunning of the assassin fails him. It failed her. It

failed her at a vital point, a point which my distinguished friend has

attempted to answer, if I may be permitted to say so, and has utterly

failed. She was alone in that house with that murdered woman. She could

not have fallen without her knowledge. The assassin could not have come

in without her knowledge. She was out of sight and Mrs. Borden was out

of sight, and by and by there was coming into the house a stern and

just man, who knew all the bitterness there was between them. There

came into that house a stern and just man who would have noticed the

absence of his wife, and who would have said to her, as the Almighty

said to Cain. “Where is Abel, thy brother?” And that question must be

answered. He came in; he sat down; she came to him, and she said to

him: “Mrs. Borden”—she would not even call her “mother” then—“Mrs.

Borden has had a note and gone out.” That stilled his fears; that

quieted any apprehensions he might have felt or reason of her absence

either from the sitting room or the kitchen, or her own room upstairs,

where he was sure to go with his key, as he did. When Bridget went

to her room, and I call your attention to this as being the first

information that Bridget had of it—it will appear by and by by the

evidence itself—before Bridget went upstairs to her room Lizzie says

to her, “If you go out, be sure and lock the door, for Mrs. Borden has

gone out on a sick call and I might go out, too.” Bridget says, “Miss

Lizzie, who is sick?” naturally enough. She said. “I don’t know, but

she had a note this morning and it must be in town.”

Mrs. Churchill came over. “Where is mother, Lizzie?” She said: “I don’t

know. She had a note to go to see some one who was sick, but I don’t

know but she is killed, too, for I think I heard her come in.” I will

talk about that by and by, if I don’t weary you too much. Then she said

something to Fleet. Although she told Fleet that the last time she saw

her stepmother was 9 o’clock, and she was then making her bed in the

room where she was found dead, she said, “some one brought a letter

or a note to Mrs. Borden,” and she thought she had gone out, and had

not known of her return. Then when Bridget came back she wanted to

find her. She knew that one of the mother’s only relatives was Mrs.

Whitehead, the sister of her husband, as it turned out, because it

turned out by Miss Emma’s cross-examination and she said: “Oh, Lizzie,

if I knew where Mrs. Whitehead lived I would go and see if Mrs. Borden

is there and tell her that Mr. Borden is very sick.” Mr. Foreman,

charged with the responsibility of the solemn trust imposed upon him,

my learned associate said in opening this case that that statement was

a lie. Conscious as I am, Mr. Foreman, that any unjust or harsh word of

mine might do injury that I never could recover my peace of conscience

for, I reaffirm that serious charge. No note came; no note was written;

nobody brought a note; nobody was sick. Mrs. Borden had not had a note.

My learned friend said, “I would stake the case on the hatchet.” I

will stake it on your belief or disbelief in the truth or falsity of

that proposition. Afterwards, after Lizzie had told Bridget that Mrs.

Borden had had a note to go out and see some one, that Mrs. Borden had

gone out on a sick call and had had the note come that morning, she

told her before she went to the room and that murder was discovered,

and after it was a matter of common talk, and when Mrs. Churchill was

asking Bridget not as a source of original information but for all

the news there could be had about it, Bridget then said to her, not

“to my own knowledge Mrs. Borden had a note to go out to see some one

who was sick,” but repeated it as the story of the original and only

author, Lizzie Borden. Obviously that is so, because when my learned

and distinguished friend comes to the cross-examination of Bridget,

this is what Bridget said, that she never had any knowledge of a note

at all, except what Lizzie told her. Pardon me for reading it, because

this is vital to the case. “You simply say that you didn’t see anybody

come with a note?” “No, sir; I did not.” “Easy enough for anybody to

come with a note to the house and you not know it, wasn’t it?” “Well,

I don’t know if a note came to the back door that I wouldn’t know.

The door bell never rang that morning at all.” “But they wouldn’t

necessarily go to the back door, would they?” “No. I never heard

anything about a note; whether they got it or not, I don’t know. I

never heard anything about a note.” She was obviously telling the story

as Lizzie had told it to her. Bridget had last seen Mrs. Borden dusting

in the sitting room. She had been told by Lizzie that she had got a

note and gone out.

No, gentlemen. In the first place, Bridget was on guard at that back

door until she had washed the windows, and no note came that way.

She testifies, and you can easily believe her testimony, because the

front door was locked with three locks all the time, that nobody came

to the front door and rang the bell with a note. I said that Almighty

providence directed the course of this world to bring murderers to

grief and justice. Little did it occur to Lizzie Borden when she told

that lie to her father that there would be manifold witnesses of the

fatality of it. They have advertised for the writer of the note,

which was never written and which never came. Gentlemen, incredulity

sometimes can be dismissed by evidence, but I am not looking in the

face of one single man that will believe for an instant that the writer

of that note would not months ago have come forward and cleared that

thing up. There never was one. Ah, but my distinguished friend is

pleased to suggest—he hardly dares to argue it, such is his insight

and fairness—he is pleased to suggest that it was part of the scheme

of assassination. How! To write a note to get a woman away when he was

going there to assassinate her? What earthly use was there in writing

a note to get rid of Mrs. Borden, when there would still be left

Lizzie and Bridget in the house? O, no, that is too wild and absurd.

The whole falsehood of that note came from the woman in whose keeping

Mrs. Borden was left by Andrew Borden, and it was as false as was the

answer that Cain gave to his Maker when he said to him, “Where is thy

brother Abel?” I regret to ask you so to believe, gentlemen. It pains

me beyond expression to be compelled to state these things. God forbid

that anybody should have committed this murder, but somebody did, and

when I have found that she was killed, not by the strong hand of man,

but by the weak and ineffectual blows of woman, when I find that those

are the blows of hatred rather than of strength, when I find that she

is left alone at the very moment of murder, shut up in that house

where every sound went from one end to the other, with the only person

in all God’s universe who could say she was not her friend, with the

only person in the universe who could be benefited by her taking away,

and when I find, as I found, and as you must find, if you answer your

consciences in this case, that the story told about a note coming is

as false as the crime itself, I am not responsible, Mr. Foreman, you

are not responsible for the conclusion to which you are driven. Bridget

finished the washing of her windows, came into the house, no one being

below the stairs, took her step ladder and began the work upon the

inside of the windows. Meanwhile the old gentleman was finishing the

last walk of his life. You find him leaving his house by the back

door, where Mrs. Churchill saw him, probably, although it may not have

been the occasion of his leaving. We certainly find him down at his

accustomed place in the bank that had honored him by making him its

president, at his usual hour of 9:30. We find him going on from this

to the other bank that honored him by making him a trustee, a little

later in the day. The malice was all before this fact. The wickedness

was all before the fourth day of August. The ingratitude, the

poisoning, the hate, the stabbing of the mind, which is worse than the

stabbing of the body, had gone on under that roof for many, many moons.

All we know is that there was a jealousy which was unworthy of that

woman. All we know is that, as Emma expressed it herself, they felt

that he was not interested in them and no step could be taken by that

poor man, no suggestion could be made by that poor man, that would not

fan the embers of that discontent into the active fires of hatred that

we have seen, alas, too many times manifested in many an unhappy home.

I speak of these things, Mr. Foreman, at this time because I have left

the dead body of that aged woman lying upon the guest chamber floor,

in the room where she was last at work, and am asking you to come down

with me to a far sadder tragedy, to the most horrible word that the

English language knows, to a parricide. I do not undertake, far be it

from me to seek to detract one iota from the terrible significance

of that word; and when I am asked to fight and prove and declare and

explain a motive for that act, well may my feeble powers quail at the

undertaking.

There may be that in this case which saves us from the idea that Lizzie

Borden planned to kill her father. I hope she did not. But Lizzie

Andrew Borden, the daughter of Andrew Jackson Borden, never came

down those stairs. It was not Lizzie Andrew Borden, the daughter of

Andrew Jackson Borden, that came down those stairs, but a murderess,

transformed from all the thirty-three years of an honest life,

transformed from the daughter, transformed from the ties of affections

to the most consummate criminal we have read of in all our history or

works of fiction. She came down to meet that stern old man. His picture

shows that, if nothing more, even in death. That just old man, of the

stern puritan stock, that most of you are from, gentlemen, that man

who loved his daughters, but who also loved his wife, as the Bible

commanded him to. And, above all, the one man in all this universe who

would know who killed his wife. She had not thought of that. She had

gone on. There is cunning in crime, but there is blindness in crime,

too. She had gone on with stealth and cunning, but she had forgotten

the hereafter. They always do. And when the deed was done she was

coming downstairs to face Nemesis. There wouldn’t be any question

of what he would know of the reason why that woman lay in death. He

knew who disliked her. He knew who could not tolerate her presence

under the roof. He knew the discussion which had led up to the pitch

of frenzy which resulted in her death, and she didn’t dare to let him

live, father though he was, and bound to her by every tie of affection.

It is the melancholy, the inevitable attribute of crime that it is

the necessary and fruitful parent of crime. He moved slowly. He went

to the back door, as was his custom, but nobody was there to open it,

and so he went around to the front door, as very likely he often did,

supposing, of course, that he could gain entrance, as any man does

into his own house in the day time, by the use of a spring lock. We

have heard something about the noise and confusion of that street, but

Bridget’s ears, which are no quicker than Lizzie’s, heard him as he put

the key into the lock, and came to the door and let him in. He came in

and passed into the dining room, because she was, I presume, working in

the sitting room, took off his coat and sat down and replaced it with

a cardigan jacket and down came Lizzie from the very place where Mrs.

Borden lay dead and told him what we cannot believe to be true about

where his wife was. I am told, gentlemen, that circumstances are to be

regarded with suspicion. Mr. Foreman, a falsehood that goes right to

the very vitals of crime is not a circumstance; it is proof. Where was

that mother? She knew. She told what never was true. That would pass

off for awhile; that would keep the old man quiet for a time, but it

would not last.

[Illustration: ATTORNEY GENERAL PILLSBURY.]

She took out her ironing-board. Why had she not been ironing in the

cellar part of the house. Mr. Foreman, we do not know. She had no

duties around the household, so Emma tells us. There was nothing for

her to do. Bridget goes into the dining room. Having finished her

windows in the sitting room, it took only a moment to go inside. Comes

into the dining room to wash the windows and the old gentleman comes

down from his room and goes into the sitting room and sits down. She

suggests to him, with the spirit in which Judas kissed his master,

that, as he is weary with his day’s work, it would be well for him to

lie down upon the sofa and rest. Then she goes into the dining room

again, gets her ironing board, and proceeds to iron her handkerchiefs.

Bridget finishes her work. She tells Bridget, and that is the first

time that Bridget heard it directly, as I stated to you yesterday, that

if she goes out that afternoon to be sure to lock the doors, because

Mrs. Borden had gone out on a sick call. And she says: “Miss Lizzie,

who is sick?” Miss Lizzie replies: “I don’t know, but it must be in

town, for she had a note this morning.” She never did, and Bridget

goes upstairs to take her little rest and leaves this woman ironing

those handkerchiefs nearer to her father as he lay on that sofa than my

distinguished friend is to me, at this moment. Again she was alone with

her victim. O, unfortunate combination of circumstances, always. Again

she is alone in the house with the man who was found murdered. It may

be safely said to be less than twenty minutes from that time she calls

Bridget down stairs and tells her that her father is killed. There is

another straw, Mr. Foreman, another chip on the surface, not floating

in an eddy, but always out in the middle of the currant, that tells

us with irresistible distinctness of what happened after Bridget went

upstairs. She had a good fire to iron the clothes with. Why do I say

that? I will not speak without the evidence if I can help it. Officer

Harrington comes along, takes a car that reaches city hall at 12:15,

goes along Main street, goes to the house, talks with Lizzie, and, last

of all, takes the cover off the stove and sees there, and I will read

his own words: “The fire was near extinguished; on the end there was

a little fire, I should judge about as large as the palm of my hand.

The embers were about dying.” That was as early as 12:30. I need not

say to you that if there was fire enough to be seen at 12:30 there was

fire enough to work with an hour and a half before 11 o’clock. There

was fire enough. There is no trouble on that account. It was a little

job she had to do, nine handkerchiefs at the outside, perhaps eight or

seven, and when this thing is over Miss Russell gets the handkerchiefs

and takes them upstairs, where we find a fatal thing, we find that four

or five, I give the exact words of those handkerchiefs: “Are ironed

and two or three are sprinkled ready to iron.” Whatever else is true,

she had begun her work before Bridget went upstairs, she was engaged

in it when Bridget left her. It was a job that could not have taken

her any more than ten minutes at the outside, if I may use the common

expression of mankind in that sort of work, and the clock of Lizzie’s

course of life stopped the instant Bridget left the room. What for?

What for, gentlemen? It would have taken but a minute or so to finish

them. The day was well gone, the dinner hour was approaching. There

were four or five to take away and but two or three to finish, and in

less time than I am speaking it would have been done.

It is terribly significant. There is that in this case which is far

deeper than these accidental variations. She says to Bridget, not to

an officer, “I was out in the back yard and heard a groan, and came in

and the screen door was wide open,” I may have occasion to say that

that story was not true either, and was not consistent with any other

story that she told. Dr. Bowen came next, I believe. He says, “Where

have you been?” O, pregnant question that nobody could fail to ask. “In

the barn looking for some irons or iron,” she answers. Mrs. Churchill

came next—I may not have the order right—and that honest woman asked

it the first thing, “Where were you when it happened, Lizzie?” “I went

to the barn to get a piece of iron.” Miss Russell heard the remark. She

does not distinctly remember asking it, and she is her friend: “What

did you go to the barn for, Lizzie?” “I went to get a piece of tin or

iron to fix my screen.” And Mr. Fleet came in, and politely, as you may

believe, courteously, as you are glad to think, he talked to her about

that important question of where she was when this thing happened. Let

me read it word for word, for it is vital and significant and Mr. Buck

will not say that one word of it is misconstrued or misremembered or

falsely stated. He asked her if she knew anything about the murders.

“She said that she did not, all she knew was that her father came home

about 10:30 or 10:45, went into the sitting room, sat down in a large

chair, took out some papers and looked at them. She was ironing in the

dining room some handkerchiefs, as she stated. She saw that her father

was feeble, and she went to him and advised and assisted him to lie

down upon the sofa. She then went into the dining room to her ironing,

but left after her father was lain down, and went out into the yard and

went up in the barn. I asked her how long she remained in the barn;

she said she remained in the barn about half an hour. I then asked her

what she meant by ‘up in the barn.’ She said, ‘I mean up in the barn,

upstairs, sir.’ She said after she had been up there about half an hour

she came down again, went into the house and found her father lying on

the lounge.” Mr. Foreman and gentlemen, we must judge all facts, all

circumstances as they appeal to your common sense. There is no other

test; there is no other duty; there is no other way of arriving at

justice, and tried by that standard I assert that that story is simply

incredible. I assert that that story is simply absurd. I assert that

that story is not within the bounds of reasonable possibilities.

That is not all. Saturday again the mayor of the city, who I assume

is a gentleman, whom I know you will believe to be one, and Marshal

Hilliard, who has answered by his dignified and courteous and wholly

respectable presence all the slanders you have heard about him in

his simple and unaffected way of testifying in this case, which is

refutation enough of all the wicked things that have been said of

him—that men came there Saturday evening, and again incidentally that

story was referred to. She told her friend Alice that she went to get

a piece of iron to fix her screen. She told them that she went out

into the barn to get some sinkers. It is not so much the contradiction

I call your attention to, for I want to be entirely fair, for both

errands might have been in her mind.

Why could we not have had somebody to have told us what was the screen

that needed fixing, and to have corroborated that story by finding the

piece of iron that was put into the screen when she was left alone and

when she came back in her fright. Show us the fish line that these

sinkers went on. It was easy to do if they were in existence, if

there was any truth in the story. Show us something by which we can

verify this ferocious fact, that the alibi she was driven to put for

herself is a good one. I will spend a little time in the prosecution

of this argument to discuss Mr. Lubinsky. What he saw and when he saw

it are absolutely indefinite. Let me treat him with entire fairness

and justice. To begin with, he is a discarded witness. He went with

his story first to Wilkinson and then to Mr. Mullaly and then to Mr.

Phillips before the hearing in the district court. Mr. Mullaly tells

you just what he told him. He saw Mr. Mullaly and told him it was

about half past 10 when he went by and saw somebody coming from the

barn. That was on the 8th day of August. About two weeks after the

time—I do not need the record, for I remember it as though it was

yesterday—about two weeks after that time he told Mr. Phillips. Yes,

it would be the 22d of August. This hearing ran through the 24th, 25th,

26th, 27th, and into the first day of September. He told a reporter,

and I presume it was published, although I do not know about that.

I won’t say that, for I don’t know. Mr. Phillips was present there

in court; witnesses were called for the defense, and Lubinsky was

not called. He had not got things patched up. And I want to know in

this connection what was the necessity of having that line drawn so

carefully by the surveyor across the plan of the first day. What has

been the significance of that thing by which it was made to appear

that a surveyor could find a line clear from a point on the street

to the barn door? And you were asked to squint across there. You saw

that you could not see the fraction of a rabbit that came out of that

barn door. Has that any connection with the first attempt at Lubinsky?

I do not know. It is one of those things they have started and have

flashed in the pan. Medley was the first one there. He got the news

before 11:30. He took a team that was coming up the street, and drove

as fast as he could drive it. He went to the station house and got the

men, started for the Borden house, and as he went by the city hall

clock it was nineteen or twenty minutes before 12. He went there; he

went into the house. He saw Miss Borden. He came out and went into

the barn. Other men did the same thing. It occurred to many, he went

there first because he was the one that found the door shut, and the

others, excepting these wonderful boy detectives, found it open. All

the contradiction of Medley is an attempt to contradict him about time.

Something has been said, Mr. Foreman and gentlemen, as to the conduct

of the defendant during this trying time. In my desire to say no word

that is not borne out by the exact facts, I forbear to criticise or

to ask you to consider against her her general demeanor after this

tragedy. I quite agree for once with my distinguished friend in his

suggestion that the absence of tears, that the icy demeanor may have

either meant consciousness of guilt or consciousness of loss.

I would not lift the weight of my finger to urge that this woman

remarkable though she is, nervy as she is, brave as she is, cool as

she is, should be condemned because grief, it may have been, but for

other things in the case, drove back the tears to their source and

forbade her to show the emotions that belong to the sex. But there

are some things that are pregnant. My distinguished friend tells of

the frequency of presentiments. They are frequent in the storybooks,

Mr. Foreman. If they occur in real life they are usually thought of

afterward. Did you ever hear one expressed beforehand? Tell me that

this woman was physically incapable of that deed? My distinguished

friend has not read female character enough to know that when a woman

dares she dares, and when she will she will, and that given a woman

that has that absolute command of herself who told Mrs. Reagan even,

that the failure to break that egg was the first time she had ever

failed in anything she undertook, a woman whose courage surpassed that

of any man I am talking to, I very humbly believe—tell me that she is

physically incapable of this act? But those are trifles, Mr. Foreman.

Those are trifles. Those are little chips that do not perhaps directly

indicate which way the current flows. But there is more in the case

than that. Of course the question arises to one’s lips. How could she

have avoided the spattering of her dress with blood if she was the

author of these crimes? As to the first crime, it is scarcely necessary

to attempt to answer the question. In the solitude of that house, with

ample fire in the stove, with ample wit of woman nobody has suggested

that as to the first crime there was not ample opportunity, ample means

and that nothing could be suggested as a reason why all the evidence

of that crime could not have been amply and successfully concealed.

But as to the second murder the question is one of more difficulty. I

cannot answer it. You cannot answer it. You are neither murderers nor

women. You have neither the craft of the assassin nor the cunning and

deftness of the sex. There are some things, however, in the case that

we know, and one of them is, and perhaps one of the pregnant facts

in the case is, that when the officers had completed their search,

and in good faith had asked her to produce the dress she was wearing

that morning, they were fooled with that garment which lies on that

trunk, which was not upon her when any human being saw her. That is a

pretty bold assertion. Let us see what the evidence of it is, because

as to that matter the evidence is contradictory, and it is the first

proposition, I believe that I have addressed touching which there is

even an attempt to show contradictory evidence. I have trod on ground

on which no attempt has been made to block the ordinary course of

reasoning, and I now approach the first subject in which there is any

attempt to show contradiction, and it turns out to be no contradiction

whatever. This dress has been described to you as a silk dress and

dark blue evidently, a dress with a figure which is not at all like a

diamond, a dress which is not cheap, a dress which would not be worn in

ironing by any prudent woman, of course not. It is an afternoon dress.

Do your wives dress in silk when they go down in the kitchen to work,

and in their household duties in the morning before dinner? But I am

not compelled to stay at suppositions of reasoning: I come to facts.

There was one woman in this world who saw Lizzie Borden after these

murders were done, and when she saw her did not suspect that murder had

been done.

Who was that? It was that clear, intelligent, honest daughter of one of

Fall River’s most honored citizens, Adelaide Churchill. Everybody else

saw her when they knew murder had been done. Addie Churchill saw her

when the most she suspected was that somebody had become sick again.

She describes the dress she had on that morning. I will read it, word

for word, to you, because it is vital: “It looked like a light blue

and white ground work; it seemed like calico or cambric, and it had

a light blue and white ground work with a navy blue diamond printed

on it.” Was the whole dress alike, the skirt and waist? It looked so

to me. Was that the dress she had on this morning (showing dark blue

dress?) She did not wish to harm a hair of Lizzie’s head. She was her

neighbor and her friend, and she would avoid it if she could. But she

answered, “It does not look like it.” Mr. Moody puts it again: “Was it,

was it?” Ah, Addie Churchill will have to give an answer which will

convict this woman of putting up a dress which is not the one she wore.

She is no police detective conspiring against her life, but her next

door neighbor, her friend, and her friend to-day. When Mr. Moody puts

the straight question to her: “Was it?” she answers: “That is not the

dress I have described.” Still it is not quite close enough. My learned

friend wants it answered more closely, and asks, “Was it the dress she

had on?” Mrs. Churchill can avoid answering no longer, and she says,

“I did not see her with it on that morning.” She further describes the

dress as having the ground work of a color “like blue and white mixed.”

It is not the testimony of one who wants her convicted. I may well

believe, I am glad to believe, although I know nothing of it, that it

is the testimony of one who would rejoice if she were not convicted.

Now comes another witness, who I believe would cut his heart strings

before he would say a word against that woman if he could help it, and

that is her physician and friend, Dr. Seabury W. Bowen, who away back

in the early stages of this case gave testimony, and the testimony

is all the more valuable because it comes from her intimate friend,

and was given at a time when it was not supposed there was ever to be

any discussion about it. He undertakes to describe the dress. Do you

remember how Lizzie was dressed that morning? “It is pretty hard work

for me. Probably if I could see a dress something like it I could

guess, but I could not describe it; it was a sort of drab, not much

color to it to attract my attention—a sort of morning calico dress,

I should judge.” That is not all. The morning dress she had worn many

times, as Miss Emma is obliged to say, poor girl. She put it in her

testimony (she wanted to help her sister) that it was very early in the

morning. Oh, unfortunate expression. Did you ever know a girl to change

her dress twice a morning, ever in the world? It was a morning dress,

and the day before the tragedy happened Bridget tells us that that

cheap morning dress, light blue with a dark figure, Wednesday morning

the dress she had on was of that description, and it was this very

bedford cord. Undoubtedly. She never wore it afterward. Friday she has

on this dress. Saturday she has on this dress, mornings and afternoon.

It is good enough for her to wear then. Perhaps there is not any

distinction of morning and afternoon then in that house of the dead. We

have had evidence of the character of the search that was made in the

house. It can, perhaps, all be well summed up in the suggestion that

the search of Thursday was perfunctory, insufficient and indecisive. It

was with no particular definite aim in view. It was absolutely without

any idea that the inmates of the house knew of this crime. It was that

sort of a search which goes through and does not see what it ought to

see. But it was enough to set them on their guard. There was in that

house somewhere a bedford cord dress. That bedford cord dress had been

stained with paint. I welcome that fact. My learned associate never

said it had not been stained with paint. I believe it had. No, I ought

not to say that. I hope, I may be corrected if I say that I believe it

at any time. There is no assertion or pretence that it had not been

stained with paint. It had not stopped the wearing of it, though.

It was good enough for a morning dress, good enough for an ironing

dress, good enough for a chore dress around the house in the morning.

But the Thursday’s search had put them on their guard, and when,

Saturday afternoon, the officers came there, they were prepared for

the most absolutely thorough search that could be made in that house.

Where was that paint stained bedford cord? Where was that dress with

paint spots on it, so thickly covering it that it was not fit to wear

any more? Where was it that the officers did not see it? Emma alone can

tell us, and Emma tries to tell us that it was in that closet. Emma

says that Saturday night she saw that dress upon the hook, and said to

Lizzie “You’d better destroy this dress,” and Lizzie said she would.

Nobody heard that conversation but Lizzie and Emma. So we cannot

contradict their words excepting by what followed. Mark the exact use

of language. Alice Russell said that when she came down stairs that

morning she went into the kitchen and Lizzie stood by the stove with

a dress skirt in her hand and a waist on the shelf near by, and Emma

turned round and said to her, “Lizzie, what are you going to do?” “I

am going to burn this old thing up. It is all covered with paint.”

There is scarcely a fact that is not incriminating against Lizzie. Mrs.

Reagan has come on the stand and told upon her oath against a woman who

is her friend, with whom she had no difficulties and who is of her own

sex, against whom she can have no object of resentment or hatred, as

to induce her to commit the foulest of crimes, has told a story which

is extremely significant. I should have hesitated to express myself as

to its significance were it not for the attestation of that fact by

the agitation, the hurrying and scurrying, the extraordinary efforts

put forth by her friends as soon as it was unadvisedly published to

suppress and deny it. They saw its significance, they are unwilling

witnesses to the character of the story and the way it bears upon the

case. That thing took place. Mrs. Reagan has appeared before you and

you are to judge whether you like her looks or not. You are to be

judges of her evidence. Miss Emma, who knew what took place, never came

to Mrs. Reagan, and said, “You have told a lie!” They were the ones

to have denied it. They were the ones to have asked her to take it

back. Miss Emma was in there the next day after the publication, and

she never found it out in her heart to say to Mrs. Reagan: “Why, Mrs.

Reagan, you have published an infamous and wicked lie about us!” It was

these same self-constituted friends who have filled the newspapers with

denunciations of delay in a trial of this cause because the appointed

officer was lying sick at his home and could not attend to it, when the

courteous and accomplished gentlemen, who had her interests in charge,

my learned friends never complained and do not to this day complain, to

their credit be it said.

I had intended, Mr. Foreman and gentlemen, at this point, to attempt

to recapitulate these things to you. I do not think I will do it. If I

have not made them plain they cannot be made plainer. Every one of them

excepting the incident of the burning of the dress and the accuracy of

the witnesses as to the dress that is produced, depend upon facts that

there is no denial of. We find a woman murdered by blows which were

struck with a weak and indecisive hand. We find that that woman had no

enemies in all the world excepting the daughter that had repudiated

her. We find that that woman was killed at half past nine, when it

passes the bounds of human credulity to believe that it could have

been done without her knowledge, her presence, her sight, her hearing.

We find a house guarded by night and by day so that no assassin could

find lodgment in it for a moment. We find that after that body had been

murdered a falsehood of the very essence of this whole case is told by

that girl to explain the story to the father, who would revenge it and

delay him from looking for her. We find her then set in her purpose

turned into a mania, so far as responsibility is concerned, considering

the question of what to do with this witness who could tell everything

of that skeleton if he saw fit. He had not always told all he knew.

He had forbidden telling of that burglary of Mrs. Borden’s things for

reasons that I do not know anything about, but which I presume were

satisfactory to him, but he would not have so suppressed or concealed

this tragedy, and so the devil came to her as God grant it may never

come to you or me, but it may. When the old man lay sleeping she was

prompted to cover her person in some imperfect way and remove him from

life and conceal the evidences, so far as she could in the hurried time

that was left her. She did not call Maggie until she got ready. She had

fifteen minutes, which is a long time, and then called her down, and

without helping the officers in one single thing, but remonstrating

with them for going into her room and asking her questions—those

servants of the law who were trying to favor her, never opening her

mouth except to tell the story of the barn, and then a story of the

note, which is all she ever told in the world. We find that woman

in a house where is found in the cellar a hatchet which answers

every requirement of this case, where no outside assassin could have

concealed it, and where she alone could have put it. We find in that

house a dress which was concealed from the officers until it was found

that the search was to be resumed and safety was not longer assured.

The dress was hidden from public gaze by the most extraordinary act of

burning that you ever heard of in all your lives by an innocent person.

We say these things float on the great current of our thought and tell

just where the stream leads to. We get down now to the elements of

ordinary crime. We get hatred, we get malice, we get falsehood about

the position and disposition of the body. We get absurd and impossible

alibis. We get contradictory stories that are not attempted to be

verified. We get fraud upon the officers by the substitution of an

afternoon silk dress as the one that she was wearing that morning

ironing, and capping the climax by the production of evidence that is

beyond all question, that there was a guilty destruction of the dress

that she feared the eye of the microscope might find the blood upon.

What is the defense, Mr. Foreman? What is the answer to this array of

impregnable facts? Nothing, nothing. I stop and think, and I say again,

nothing. Some dust thrown upon the story of Mrs. Reagan which is not

of the essence of the case, some question about time put upon the acts

of Mr. Medley which is not of the essence of the case; some absurd and

trifling stories about drunken men the night before and dogs in the

yard the night before. Of men standing quietly on the street the same

day of the tragedy, exposing their bloody persons for the inspection

of passersby, of a pale, irresolute man walking up the street in broad

daylight. Nothing, nothing. The distinguished counsel, with all his

eloquence, which I can’t hope to match or approach, has attempted

nothing but to say, “Not proven.” But it is proven; it is proven. We

cannot measure facts, Mr. Foreman. We cannot put a yardstick to them.

We cannot determine the length and breadth and the thickness of them.

There is only one test of facts. Do they lead us to firm belief? if

they do they have done the only duty they are capable of. You cannot

measure the light that shines about you; you cannot weigh it, but we

know when it is light because it shines into our hearts and eyes. That

is all there is to this question of reasonable doubt. Give the prisoner

every vestige of benefit of it. The last question to be answered is

taken from these facts together. Are you satisfied that it was done by

her? I have attempted, Mr. Foreman, how imperfectly none but myself can

say, to discharge the sad duty which has devolved upon me.

He who could have charmed and entertained and inspired you is still

detained by sickness, and it has fallen to my lot to fill unworthily

the place of the chief lawgiver of this commonwealth. But I submit

these facts to you with the confidence that you are men of courage and

truth. I have no other suggestion to make to you than that you shall

deal with them with that courage that befits sons of Massachusetts. I

do not put it on so low a ground as to ask you to avenge these horrid

deaths. O, no, I do not put it even on the ground of asking you to do

credit to the good old commonwealth of Massachusetts. I lift you higher

than that, gentlemen. I advance you to the altitude of the conscience

that must be the final master of us all. You are merciful men. The

wells of mercy, I hope, are not dried up in any of us. But this is not

the time nor the place for the exercise of it. That mighty prerogative

of mercy is not absent from the jurisprudence of this glorious old

commonwealth. It is vested in magistrates, one of the most conspicuous

of whom was the honored gentleman who has addressed you before me, and

to whom no appeal for mercy ever fell upon harsh or unwilling ears. Let

mercy be taken care of by those to whom you have intrusted the quality

of mercy. It is not strained in the commonwealth of Massachusetts. It

is not for us to discuss that. It is for us to answer questions, the

responsibility of which is not with you nor with me. We neither made

these laws, nor do we execute them. We are responsible only for the

justice, the courage, the ability with which we meet to find an answer

to the truth. Rise, gentlemen, rise to the altitude of your duty. Act

as as you would act when you stand before the great white throne at

the last day. What shall be your reward? The ineffable consciousness

of duty done. There is no strait so hard, there is no affliction so

bitter, that it is not made light and easy by the consciousness that

in times of trial you have done your duty and your whole duty. There

is no applause of the world, there is no station of hight, there is no

seduction of fame that can compensate for the gnawings of an outraged

conscience. Only he who hears the voice of his inner consciousness, it

is the voice of God himself saying to him “Well done, good and faithful

servant,” can enter into the reward and lay hold of eternal life.