Clothes Press

Of the two pieces of evidence, finding blood on her clothing would have been most important. After all, an intruder could have left a weapon behind, but blood on one of Lizzie’s dresses would point to her and only her. That is why the Saturday search of the clothes press ultimately became a much-discussed topic at trial.

Deputy Marshal Fleet had already looked in the clothes closet on Thursday, the day of the murders, testifying at the preliminary hearing that he looked “behind the dresses” hanging on nails and “took each dress and looked at it.” He also said the dresses were covered by a sheet but later had to amend this at the trial because there actually was no sheet covering the dresses. He also added that he didn’t look at the dresses on that Thursday “very closely,” saying that he only spent about “two minutes” on the task.

But the Saturday search was different. Seaver stepped into the clothes press behind Fleet to examine the dresses with him, and they began a process in which Seaver took one of the “dozen or more” dresses off the nail on which it hung inside out, examined it himself, then handed it to Fleet, who stood by the large west-facing window in better light. Fleet then gave each dress a careful examination, looking for signs of blood, before handing it back to Seaver to return it to its place on the nail. They repeated this procedure with all the dresses hanging in the closet, which theoretically should have been all the dresses in the house except for those that belonged to Abby and Bridget, and those that Lizzie and Emma were wearing at that time.

While Fleet testified that they looked at each dress “very closely,” he also admitted they did not as carefully inspect the few heavy silk dresses that hung in the corner of the closet. Seaver said they “looked at” those dresses but did not take them down from their nails. Later case observers have bemoaned this investigative laziness, and many—especially those in the guilty camp—have wondered if, as Victoria Lincoln suggested, Lizzie had hidden a blood stained dress behind those heavy silks.

Because police later learned from Alice Russell that Lizzie had suspiciously burned her paint-stained Bedford Cord dress the day after this search, both men were asked specifically if they noticed any paint stains on any of the dresses, and both said no. Nor did they, or any other officer engaged in the search, find any dresses, paint-stained or otherwise, stashed anywhere else in the house—a house they had searched with a fine-toothed comb.  

When the defense later presented its case, they called Emma Borden to the stand to testify first about the number of dresses she believed were actually hanging in the clothes press on the day of the intensive search. She answered that she had made a list and recalled there were 18 or 19 dresses hanging inside that closet.

Next, she testified that she herself had seen the paint-stained Beford Cord hanging in the clothes press on Saturday evening, after the search was finished. The district attorney would later accuse Emma of lying and insist that Fleet and Seaver would not have failed to notice paint stains on one of the dresses they had so closely examined. However, because Seaver, who took on responsibility for making an inventory of the dresses they examined, lost that written inventory, (he said he had left it in a coat pocket, from which it disappeared), the officers could not prove the Bedford Cord had not been hanging there.

In fact, questioning from Lizzie’s lawyer revealed that neither man could come up with a good description of any of the dresses they took into their hands to inspect, although Seaver seemed to remember a black one. But Seaver couldn’t recall whether there were any blue dresses in that closet at all, while Emma would testify there were actually 10 blue dresses in that closet at the time it was searched. So, how closely they actually looked at the dresses in the clothes press is a question that remains open today.

For more on the courtroom drama around the dress that Lizzie wore or didn’t wear, or perhaps hid or didn’t hide, see Bedford Cord, Bengaline Silk, and Dress Lizzie Wore.