EXORDIUM: Lizzie Borden

Arsenic. Lies. Alibis. A one-woman crime wave.

Three months before the murders in the first week of May, dressmaker Mary Raymond came to the Borden house to make a Bedford Cord dress for Lizzie Borden. She described it as a two-piece blouse waist with a full skirt and straight widths, light blue in color with a dark figure.

Later at trial, Lizzie’s lawyer Andrew Jennings asked Mrs. Raymond to describe the sleeves. She said they were “full large sleeves and that the length of the skirt was 2 inches longer than her usual dresses.” In those days, full sleeves meant “leg-o-mutton” sleeves. You can hide a lot in those big puffy sleeves.

She summed up her testimony by saying the Bedford Cord was a cheap cotton dress trimmed with a ruffle around the bottom. A common house dress was often referred to as calico or cambric during that era which always meant it was easy to replace and at eight cents a yard you could spend about a dollar per dress. 

During Lizzie’s inquest, District Attorney Hosea Knowlton asked her, “What dress did you wear on the day of the murders?” Her answer is still surprising even after all these years and I suspect every housewife in Fall River might have been thinking that Lizzie was telling a falsehood. 

“I had on a navy blue, sort of Bengaline silk skirt with a navy-blue blouse. In the afternoon, they thought I had better change. I put on a pink wrapper.”  Lizzie was trying to sound like her rich cousins on the hill. But a middle-class woman would not wear silk clothing as a morning house dress to iron handkerchiefs in the summer’s heat and humidity. It isn’t practical and witnesses never described her as wearing a silk skirt.

Witnesses would, however, describe the actual dress that Lizzie wore on the day of the murders as the cheap morning dress, the Bedford Cord. We know this because this was the dress she refused to turn into the police, and they could not find it during three searches of the house. When close friend Alice Russell walked in unexpectedly on Lizzie burning pieces of the dress in the stove Alice said, “I wouldn’t let anyone see me do that, Lizzie” to which Lizzie replied, “Look, it has paint on it” and indeed it did.

In fact, moments after it was hurriedly made-to-order by the temporary live-in seamstress, Lizzie ran out downstairs from the sewing room and out of the house with the new skirt on and got freshly laid paint on it. Oddly, the seamstress was still in the house and she later testified that the paint was on the front of the dress, around the bottom, around the ruffle and the underneath part of the hem. 

But where on the front of the dress? This does not sound that critical. All of this could have been easily fixed and would not require the complete annihilation of a new dress. Lizzie acted like someone that needed an alibi to burn a dress and she wanted everyone to know it. Subtlety was not her strong suit. 

Did this dress possess a bloodstain that had come from a source outside of the body? Lizzie used her monthlies (“having fleas”) as part of her alibi for the random blood drop on her cotton underskirt. The police found a bucket of bloody rags soaking in water in the cellar on the day of the murders. Bridget Sullivan, the Borden’s maid, said the bucket was not there on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday.

The Bedford Cord would become one of the frustrating pillars of the case as several witnesses gave conflicting testimony to its description, but it was not the only dress talked about at the trial. Mrs. Raymond also made a fashionable pink-and-white striped house “wrap” that wrapped around Lizzie’s body, with a large, red ribbon bow tied in the front giving off a relaxed party vibe. 

Lizzie’s pink-and-white wrap dress caught the attention of everyone in the house. It was made at the same time Lizzie had the Bedford Cord made. Later, when she was required to turn in the dress worn on the day of the murders, she substituted a different blue dress to avoid the “eye of the microscope.” But her plan backfired when witnesses said, “that was not the dress they remembered seeing on Thursday, the day of the murders.”

Poison Me Green 

From the very first time we hear “someone has poisoned our milk,” the words came from Abby Borden’s frightened lips to Dr. Bowen on Wednesday morning less than 26 hours before her death. She and Andrew spent the night violently expelling a noxious poison that infiltrated their bodies. This wasn’t the usual summer sickness that poor refrigeration often visited upon them. It was different. 

Mrs. Borden’s concerns were not taken seriously. Dr. Bowen prescribed castor oil in port wine to take the taste off and Garfield tea, a mild laxative. Later that evening, Lizzie unexpectedly arrived at Alice Russel’s and used the same verbiage. “I think Father must have an enemy, someone has poisoned our milk, for we have all been sick.” 

Dressmaker Mary Raymond would testify about the making of the dress and the phenomenon of the paint on the dress but what you don’t know is about the painter’s stolen arsenic that was needed to make the Victorian green hue called Drab Green. 

Painters were required to make paints by hand in those days using a combination of linseed oil, warm water, and vinegar mixed with copper and arsenic. Between 1880 and 1990, arsenic was used to give the paint a brilliance beyond compare, but it was found to be toxic and deadly when used in dresses, wallpapers and house paints. 

The painter’s name was John Grouard, and he too would have to testify during the superior court trial about his interactions with Lizzie Borden. 

Curiously, when the house was painted, it was Lizzie’s job to oversee the color. Lizzie took a dislike to the color of the first batch. The painter would have to leave his tools, paint, brushes, oils, copper, and arsenic in the barn overnight and render a new batch in the dawn’s early light.   Such a shame that another break-in would occur at the Borden’s garage on that very night! 

In my last article, I discussed how Lizzie planned the daylight robbery as a dress rehearsal for the murders. I believe it was her way of showing a jury how easily a stranger could enter into “a house of locks,” commit two dastardly acts, hideout for two hours without being seen by Bridget or Lizzie and leave without being seen. (Cough)

According to historian and author Rebecca F. Pittman, Lizzie planned the robbery to steal the arsenic to poison the elder Borden’s milk. She did this on their yearly sabbatical to their Swansea, Massachusetts, retreat that always began on August 1 during their heatwave. The unfortunate part is that Lizzie instead ended up poisoning the elderly farm hands that managed the farm for the Bordens. Pittman intimates and I agree, the farmhands drank the milk intended for Andrew and Abby, who had to cancel their plans and stay in Fall River, where they met their untimely demise. 

The farmhands were long time-employees of the Bordens and were reportedly so ill that they were bedridden during the week of the murders on Thursday, August 4, 1892. This coincided with Lizzie poisoning the milk cans early on August 1, 1892. 

According to Pittman’s hypothesis, there is a seventy-two-hour interval where Lizzie’s whereabouts were unaccounted for, giving her ample time to travel to the Swansea farm, poison the milk, and return to Fall River. Space will not permit me to go into it here. That book is a gem, check it out.

During her Grand Jury interview, Alice Russell would testify that she saw Lizzie tear and burn parts of the Bedford Cord dress from a pantry shelf and place it into the stove after the murders. She also said Lizzie showed her pieces of the hem that contained the paint. Was she saving those pieces for last in case someone walked in? What really seemed to grab every housewife in Fall River was how thrifty Yankee Protestants like the Bordens “never kept a rag bag” as testified by Emma Borden. 

Gossamer Theory

You may be wondering why did Lizzie need a cheap murder dress to wear and dispose of after the murders if she was wearing a waterproof gossamer cape? Because of leakage from the cape’s buttonholes. Murder is messy even when you think you have taken care of everything. See my Substack article, “Did Lizzie Borden Use a Gossamer for Murder? 

I have called Lizzie a “practical, thrifty, spinster” in my last two articles. As soon as it was reported in the witness statements that Lizzie went shopping for cheap dress material in New Bedford, a few weeks before the murders, we had a strong clue that this day was coming. Lizzie made a murder dress. Perhaps she made two of them.

This gave her an excuse to burn the dress on the stove. Without paint on the dress, it would look too suspicious to suddenly burn a dress after the mayor of Fall River tells you that you are the only suspect in the murder of your parents. 

References: The History and Haunting of Lizzie Borden by Rebecca F. Pittman 2016. Available on Amazon and Target in paperback. 2016