Animals and Lizzie

On a Sunday afternoon in October of 1913, nurse Helen Leighton and her friend, schoolteacher Gertrude Baker, met in Lizzie Borden’s parlor to discuss the care and welfare of the abused draft horses in the Fall River area at the time,” says the website of the Animal Rescue League (ARL) of Fall River. “Lizzie, a lifelong lover of animals, agreed to help … They planned to purchase a barn at 474 Durfee Street (the current location of the ARL) where the abused horses would receive care. Helen and Gertrude became founding members of the Animal Rescue League of Fall River, which was officially incorporated on June 25, 1914.”

So it was perhaps not a great surprise that after Lizzie died, her will stipulated that her largest individual bequest, $30,000, would go to the Animal Rescue League of Fall River. (Emma also left $20,000 to the League in her will.) Lizzie bequeathed another $2,000 to an animal welfare league in Washington, D.C. “I have been fond of animals, and their need is great and there are so few who care for them,” she wrote.

Meanwhile, the bulk of her estate was divided between two primary heirs:  her cousin, Grace Hartley Howe, and Helen Leighton, who became her closest friend in later life. Clearly, their shared love of animals created a mutual mission and a lasting bond.

Lizzie and Her Pets

The only time Lizzie was known to sit for a photographer later in life produced an image of Lizzie sitting on her piazza at Maplecroft, her home in Fall River, as she looked down affectionately at a black and white dog sitting on her lap. That dog was named Laddie Miller, and it was one of the three Boston Bull Terriers that kept Lizzie good company in her later years. Lizzie doted on her dogs and usually had at least one with her when her chauffeur took her for rides in the country. According to Grace Terry, the daughter of Lizzie’s last chauffeur, Lizzie had a special seat for the dogs built in the car specifically for such rides.

A sweet story in Parallel Lives, told by Florence McDonald, the niece of Lizzie’s physician and friend, confirms Lizzie’s love for dogs. Florence said that she was visiting her aunt just after her aunt acquired a dog when Lizzie Borden dropped by eager to see the new puppy. After “approving” the dog, Lizzie then asked Florence if she would like to meet her own dog and took her out to the car to introduce the girl to her bull terrier. “She came back fairly often and I liked her,” said Florence.

Cats were also known to roam Lizzie’s property at Maplecroft, and Lizzie welcomed at least one cat inside and gave it the name “Blackie.” The Fall River Historical Society says that it has in its possession “the only known photograph taken inside Maplecroft during the time the Borden sisters lived there. Donated by a descendant of Lizzie’s personal maid, Ida S. Carlson, the rare image is of Lizzie’s cherished cat, Blackie.”

After her death, Lizzie’s obituary in the Fall River Globe noted her love for animals. “Greatly interested in nature, she was daily seen providing for the hundreds of birds that frequented the trees in her yard, taking care that the shallow box where they gathered was filled with crumbs, seeds, and other foods that they favored. She had miniature houses erected in her trees, and, in these, frivolous squirrels made their homes. Her figure as she visited with her wild callers, many of whom became so friendly that they never seemed to mind her approach, was a familiar one in that section.”

According to Denise Noe in her article “Lizzie and Animals” for The Hatchet, “A 1917 report issued by the Animal Rescue League of Fall River lists ‘Miss Helen Leighton,’ ‘Miss E. L. Borden,’ and ‘Miss L. A. Borden’ as Life Members of the organization. Poignantly, the report also says that ‘Life Memberships have been taken in memory’ of three deceased dogs: Donald Stuart Borden, Royal Nelson Borden and Laddie Miller Borden.” Leonard Rebello, in Lizzie Borden: Past and Present, presumed that Lizzie named two of them after her much-loved employees at Maplecroft, Hannah B. Nelson and Ellen Miller.

In 1927, Lizzie purchased lots for the dogs at an animal cemetery in Dedham, Massachusetts, and their bodies were moved there after her death per instructions. “It is significant that, in failing health, Lizzie thought of acquiring a respectful resting place for her beloved dogs,” wrote Noe. Inscribed on their headstone under their names were the words “Sleeping Awhile.”

Today, the Animal Rescue League pays tribute to the Borden sisters by displaying their photographs on the wall in the Shelter lobby located at 474 Durfee Street, Fall River, MA, the original location of the barn Lizzie purchased to begin the work of the Animal Rescue League of Fall River.

“Strange Irony”

Lizzie must have always been drawn to animals, although it’s unknown whether she had pets while growing up. There is no record of the Borden family keeping animals at 92 Second Street, except for a horse in the barn to draw a carriage. And, for a time, Andrew kept pigeons in the barn as livestock as well. The popular notion that those pigeons were Lizzie’s beloved pets, which Andrew cruelly slaughtered with a hatchet, is a myth; Lizzie testified he wrung their necks when it was time to eat them. (Andrew seems to have given up on pigeon-raising when it became clear that neighborhood boys broke into his barn to get at them.)

Another myth, propagated by Abby Borden’s niece, would have us believe that Lizzie chopped the head off Abby’s cat and boasted of it to a visiting friend, which is, of course, nonsense. (See Cats.) According to Helen Leighton, the person closest to her in her last decade, “Miss Borden was most sensitive to pain. She could not bear to see suffering. It distressed her most terribly to see a person or the humblest of animals in pain. It seems a strange irony that such a tender-hearted, kindly woman as Miss Borden should have been linked in the public mind with such an atrocious crime.”

In another strange irony, Lizzie’s well-known compassion for animals, while convincing some that soft-hearted Lizzie could not possibly have killed her parents, has sometimes convinced others that she was more likely to be guilty. At least that was the (perhaps) tongue-in-cheek contention of cultural critic Alexander Woollcott writing in Vanity Fair in 1927, right after Lizzie’s death. “For it is, I am told, a pet theory among many latter-day psychiatrists that a peculiarly ardent concern in behalf of our feathered or four-footed friends is a tell-tale token of some old brutality undergoing compensation and atonement or at least is an outward scar of some ancient impulse of cruelty towards human beings, never satisfied, perhaps, and long since suppressed.” In other words, those who care the most about the lives of animals are likely to care the least about the lives of their fellow humans.

However, while Lizzie did leave a large bequest to the Animal Rescue League she helped establish, that bequest was only number four on the list. Number one on the list? A bequest to the City of Fall River, providing money for the perpetual upkeep of her father’s grave.