Lizzie Borden's Parents Were Murdered - Aug. 4, 1892

Lizzie Borden's parents were murdered on this day in 1892. Learn more details in the August 15, 2012, episode of Stuff You Missed in History Class, "Lizzie Borden and Her Axe (Update)."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to This Day in History class from how Stuff
Works dot Com and from the desk of Stuff You
Missed in History Class. It's the show where we explore
the past one day at a time with a quick
look at what happened today in history. Welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and it's August four. On this day,

(00:22):
someone murdered Lizzie Borden's parents with an axe in Fall River, Massachusetts.
According to that famous rhyme, it was Lizzie Borden. She
gave her mother forty wax, and when she saw what
she had done, she gave her father forty one. You
probably know that, but none of that is right. Number one,
It was Lizzie Borden's stepmother. Her mother was Sarah Anthony Morse,

(00:45):
who died when Lizzie was about three, and her dad,
Andrew Jackson Borden, remarried a woman named Abby Turphy. This
part is maybe a more excusable mistake, though for as
far as we know, Lizzie called Abbey mother for most
of her young life. The second big mistake, Abby did
not get forty wax with that axe. There were nineteam

(01:05):
and then Andrew did not get forty one. He got ten.
It's also really not clear as many people are sure
that Lizzie Bordon did it, it's not clear who delivered
those wax. She was the prime suspect. She was put
on trial. She was also acquitted, and she was the
prime suspect for several reasons. Both she and her sister

(01:25):
Emma were upset that their father had given one of
the properties that they owned to their stepmother rather than
to them. They were older at this point in terms
of when people typically married. They were not married yet.
Having this property would have helped them support themselves. There's
maybe some financial jealousy or greed going on. The day
before the murderers, Lizzie had also allegedly tried to buy

(01:48):
poison from the pharmacist, and even though he refused, the
Boardings and their Maide all reported feeling sick to their
stomachs the next morning. Lizzie was also suspected because she
was home at the time and there were no signs
of a break in or a struggle, so there were
a lot of questions about how would you miss the
fact that your stepmother was literally being murdered with an
ax right down the hall and when a police officer

(02:08):
on the scene asked Lizzie when she had last seen
her mother, she said, no, it's my stepmother, and this
guy brought up a lot after that. She also did
give a lot of contradictory answers, and she acted really
strange on the stand. This may be explained though, by
the fact that she had been given morphine as a sedative.
She had also bird address in the kitchen a few

(02:30):
days after the murder. She was portrayed for a long
time is really cold and unfeeling toward her family. But
some documents that were uncovered more recently showed that while
she was being held she had this just colossal amount
of grief over their deaths. At the same time, though,
I mean, that's a lot of circumstantial evidence that people
pointed to Lizzie Borden, but there was no blood on her,

(02:53):
not on her clothing or in her shoes. Officially, it's unsolved.
Nobody else has ever charred. But after the trial was over,
Lizzie Borden was really ostracized by the community. This rhyme
is just entrenched in popular consciousness. It goes all the
way back to not at all long after this whole
thing happened. People know Lizzie Borden took an act. She

(03:14):
gave her mother forty wax. The story has also been
remade over and over and over in books and movies
and songs, on and on. It's a little odd that
it has stuck so well in people's memories. It's a
gruesome and horrifying crime, but also not that uncommon of
a crime when it happened. Was the murder of two

(03:35):
people who were related to each other, carried out with
an axe, which is a very common murder weapon. In
the nineteenth century, most people had one at hand. Crimes
of convenience often were committed with handy objects. You can
find out more about Lizzie Borden on the October episode
of Stuffy Missed in History Class, which was also updated

(03:56):
on August thanks to Tarry Harrison for her audio skills
on these episodes, and you can subscribe to the Stay
in History Class on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, and whatever
else you get your podcasts. Tune in tomorrow for some
heroic women in World War Two.