I can’t possibly start the daily timeline of Lizzie’s trial on my new Substack blog until I get this article published as I believe it is a prelude to the murders that will be coming down the road on August 4, 1892, a mere 403 days away.
Borden scholars have their own versions of this event, but the original police report is available in The Knowlton Papers or on Faye Musselman's blog, Lizzie Borden: Tattered Fabric. The audio version will appear in Season 2 of Lizzie Borden Audio on Supercast, not yet available.
The Play’s The Thing…
If you’re inclined to look for patterns in predicting human behavior, then this is the place to start. Everything about this burglary has the same strangeness as the murders.
Captain Dennis Desmond, Jr. of the Fall River Police Department took the call from the City Marshall’s office. Andrew and Abby Borden had been staying at their summer retreat in Swansea only to arrive home to find they had been victims of an unusual daylight robbery.
When the captain arrived, he found Andrew and Abby’s private desk ransacked. Cash and personal items belonging to Mrs. Borden that were kept locked in a clothespress off their master bedroom on the second floor were gone. Yet, a stranger could hardly be aware of the desk’s existence.
The brazenly bold thief had entered the Borden domicile at 92 Second Street in Fall River through the back door of the cellar with only a 6- or 8-penny nail. Traversing the rest of the house with the skill of Houdini, they never aroused the attention of the house’s three occupants. But before we continue, a brief introduction on nails.
Penny Nails
A 6-penny nail is two inches long. The term is believed to have originated in England in the fifteenth century, with penny sizes referring to the number of pennies needed to purchase 100 nails.
An 8-penny nail is a half-inch longer, and I included them in the picture so you can visualize how a thief could not have used a nail to open a skeleton key lock in any of Borden's doors or desks.
Skeleton key locks require the protrusion at the end of the key to slide the deadbolt out of the keyhole. If you're interested in more detail, I have included a video at the end, How to Pick a Skeleton Key Lock.
The Thief’s Ill-Gotten Gains
The lucky thief hit the jackpot for their efforts. Missing were $80 in cash and $40 in gold coins (worth $3,763.12 in today’s money) and a large number of commemorative streetcar tickets that bore the name Frank W. Brightman. They were a gift from one of Andrew’s bank associates. Quite possibly, the tickets could be one way to apprehend the thief if they were used.
In addition, the thief found a cache of Mrs. Borden’s personal keepsakes, such as a gold watch and chain of sentimental value. Especially upsetting was the loss of a red Russian leather pocketbook that contained a lock of hair, something she probably cherished.
It would take a ruthless kind of thief to steal something so personal and of no monetary value. Author Rebecca F. Pittman said it perfectly in her book, The History and Haunting of Lizzie Borden.
An intruder from the outside would need to be intimately familiar with the coming and goings of all the people at the house. How did this clever intruder know exactly when and how and where to traverse the landscape of the house without alerting the occupants?
No word was written about what Emma, Lizzie, and Bridget were doing during the robbery, but they told Captain Desmond they never heard a thing.
Mrs. Borden appeared to be the most affected by the robbery and said to the captain, “I prize the watch very much, and I wish and hope that you get it; but I have a feeling that you never will.”
Poor Mrs. Borden. Her days were numbered although she doesn’t know it. It wouldn’t be long before she would be gaslighted, poisoned, and brutally killed by her selfish, greedy, uncaring stepdaughter.
Was Lizzie Borden Involved?
Lizzie Borden interjected herself into the criminal investigation (as many criminals are known to do) and said, “I did get a six- or eight-penny nail in the door. The cellar door was open, and someone might have come in that way.”
Pittman also writes, “Lizzie was quick to offer her crime scene analysis and showed the officers an old 6 or 8 penny nail which she found in the keyhole leading to a bedroom.”
Could these be the same “old nails” Lizzie mentions in her inquest testimony some fourteen months later as being in an “old box” up in the barn? Available in my podcast series The Inquest Episodes 1-4 by Lizzie Borden Audio.
Why buy new nails? As I wrote in my first Substack hypothesis about how Lizzie managed to appear so soon to neighbors with no blood on her hair or clothes by using a gossamer, she was a practical, thrifty spinster. Did Lizzie Borden Use A Gossamer for Murder?
The police report said that Andrew Borden tried two times in three weeks to call off the investigation. What was he afraid of?
Did it slowly dawn on him that his youngest daughter still had a lot of anger over the premature death of her birth mother because he had been too cheap to pay for a doctor?
Pittman goes on to write,
The streets were watched for several weeks when suddenly, there was a break in the case. Someone had used the streetcar ticket.
Officer Desmond had the unpopular job of telling Andrew they had been traced to his youngest daughter …
Come spring of 1892, Lizzie would begin to report seeing a strange man run around to the back of the house whenever she came home alone.
References
The History and Haunting of Lizzie Borden by Rebecca F. Pittman (book)
The Daylight Robbery – Something New Revealed (blog post on Tattered Fabric: Fall River’s Lizzie Borden by Faye Musselman (blog)
Did Lizzie Borden Use a Gossamer for Murder?