Estrangement

Although Lizzie had been found “not guilty” by a jury, that didn’t mean the citizens of Fall River were satisfied she was innocent. Newspaper editors, especially at the Fall River Globe, were not about to allow Lizzie to live in obscurity, their headlines still picked her apart, year after year, and their reporters still put forth false stories about her. The elite on The Hill where they lived still shunned her and neighborhood children taunted her, throwing gravel and eggs at the house.

Sharing a life with Lizzie was not easy, and it appeared that Emma wanted her sister to exhibit proper decorum and live in a way that drew the least attention possible. But by 1905, Lizzie had started calling herself “Lizbeth,” and somewhere along the way started calling their house “Maplecroft” as well, which, according to Victoria Lincoln, was perceived by those on The Hill as overly “pretentious” moves, eliciting eye rolls and snickers of derision. This probably caused great discomfort to Emma, who was said to have “several times reproved her sister for her frivolity.” If so, one can imagine Lizzie eventually grew tired of trying to please people who refused to be pleased and would continue to display hostility toward her no matter what she did.

Of course, public speculation ran rampant that Emma moved out because Lizzie either confessed to her that she had killed their father and stepmother, or Emma had realized it on her own. But Emma, in a 1913 interview with the Boston Post, insisted that even though she hadn’t spoken to her sister in the past seven years, she still strongly believed in Lizzie’s innocence. She would not reveal the actual reason she decided to abandon their shared house, saying only this:

“The happenings at French street that caused me to leave I must refuse to talk about. I did not go until conditions became absolutely unbearable. Then, before taking action, I consulted the Rev. A. E. Buck who for years had been the family spiritual advisor. After carefully listening to my story, he said it was imperative that I should make my home elsewhere.”

Meanwhile, Lizzie never publicly addressed what triggered the split between them at all. But whether the sisters wanted to talk about it or not, newspaper reporters had no problem speculating. And they were pretty sure it was the company that Lizzie was keeping.

The Stage Actress

A typical report of the rupture followed the lines of this one, The San Francisco Call, June 6, 1905, under the following headline: SISTERS ESTRANGED OVER NANCE O’NEILL—Her Entertainment Causes Quarrel Between Lizzie and Emma Borden.

“The separation of Lizzie and Emma Borden of this city has aroused no little attention in this community, owing to the notoriety attained by the sisters thirteen years ago, when Lizzie A. Borden was acquitted after a long and sensational trial for the murder of her father and mother. It was impossible to get a statement from Lizzie Borden regarding the quarrel with her sister, but the trouble originated from some disagreement during the winter after Lizzie Borden had given a dinner and entertainment at the Borden home to Nance O’Neill and her company. Lizzie Borden is an intimate friend of Miss O’Neill, whose friendship she is said to have formed last summer at a summer resort near Boston.”

By 1904, Lizzie was frequently traveling to Boston to attend theater productions and that year the most popular actress of the season was Nance O’Neil, a gifted “tragedienne” whose stage performance in MacBeth thrilled Lizzie so much that she asked for a meeting in order to express her admiration. The two women immediately hit it off and Lizzie was invited into Nance’s circle of friends. How refreshing it must have been for Lizzie that theater people did not care about her tarnished reputation and simply accepted her for the nice and “fun” person she longed to be. She returned the favor by not caring about what people thought of the vulgarity of mingling with theater folk. She decided to throw Nance’s entire theater company several parties as they traveled around New England that season.

These events were seen as distasteful to the staid and snobbish citizens Fall River, and they judged Lizzie harshly for it, as they did most things. Rumors that she may have even been romantically involved with Nance made her actions even more scandalous. (For more on that rumor, see Lesbian Theory.) It would appear Emma also judged Lizzie harshly for her choice of friends, as it was not long after these parties that Emma finally moved out. Such goings-on may have been the proverbial “straw that broke the camel’s back” in Emma’s estimation.

But, as noted by the authors of Parallel Lives: A Social History of Lizzie Borden and Her Fall River, Emma’s claim that she discussed her difficulties with Lizzie with Reverend Buck, who died in 1903, a full year before Lizzie met Nance O’Neill, tells us the rift between the sisters had been growing for quite some time. And the timing of that conversation with Buck would coincide with another person who became part of life on French Street that Emma appears to have found problematic as well.

The Handsome Coachman

One point of contention between the sisters appears to have been a coachman by the name of Joseph Tetrault, who they hired in 1902 and soon to discovered to be “very popular among the ladies,” said the authors of Parallel Lives. Miss Emma formed a “dislike for some of the doings and position of the coachman,” which caused unpleasant gossip to once again swirl around Emma and Lizzie. The sisters dismissed him from his position, “and he returned to his former trade, a barber. After a time, the talk subsided and again Tetrault became the coachman in the Borden establishment,” presumably re-hired by Lizzie, who obviously liked him.

There were rumors that Lizzie herself had surrendered to his charms as she was known to give him gifts; but then, Lizzie gave all her employees gifts. Thus, how much she personally liked Tetrault or how much she may have been willing to turn a blind eye toward his supposed dalliances with other women is unknown. Another story that popped up in newspapers suggested a different reason for the break, saying it was Lizzie’s friendship with “a Fall River woman” who kept talking Lizzie into giving her money that most alarmed Emma. Yet, most believe the serious trouble between the sisters began because Emma was unhappy with Tetrault’s behavior and unhappy with Lizzie for keeping the object of unsavory gossip in their employ. In Emma’s mind, this could have been an “unbearable” situation. This, along with Lizzie’s sudden proclivity to entertaining theater people, could have been what caused her sister to finally pack up and go.  

Apparently, whatever caused the break with Emma also caused a break with some of Lizzie’s most loyal friends, including Lizzie’s one-time staunch supporter Mrs. Mary Brigham. It is hard to imagine that friends who remained by her side through suspicion of murder and a sensationalized trial would be driven away by a few episodes tawdry gossip. But even Mrs. Brigham’s daughter-in-law, Florence Brigham, an eventual director of the Fall River Historical Society, conceded that Mrs. Brigham “gave up on Lizzie,” and believed the reason to be “those theater people. I can just imagine [my mother-in-law] and all those other Yankees saying: ‘Now what does she want to do this for? Disgrace herself—and us—because we accepted her back.’”

Emma and Lizzie famously never spoke to each other again. Such a decisive split must have been painful for both sisters; they had been through so much together. They lost their mother, leaving Emma to serve as “little mother” to “baby Lizzie.” They had tightly bonded over a mutual dislike of the stepmother they lived with for 27 years. Then, they sustained each other through the horrific murders of Andrew and Abby and the nightmare of Lizzie’s arrest and trial for those murders. They were clearly close and supportive of each other for decades.

Yet, it might also have been a relief to at last be able to move on and establish their independence from each other, and to live their lives to their own tastes and their own sense of what was right and wrong. Emma never bought another house for herself, even though she could have afforded it. She preferred to move from place to place, staying long periods in the homes of welcoming friends who were more like herself, such as the Misses Buck, the five spinster daughters of Reverend Buck.

Meanwhile, Lizzie was free to form attachments as she pleased to the people who, like Tetrault, worked for her and lived in the house with her. (Tetrault remained her coachman until 1908.) Eventually, her employees became her family, and she treated them as such. She became the adored “Auntie Borden” to their children, showering them gifts, paying for their medical bills and their education. She took care of them, and they took care of her until the end.

For more on the life Lizzie settled into after Emma’s departure, see Lizzie’s Final Years.

For the complete text of Emma’s 1913 interview in which she speaks of the rift between herself and Lizzie, as well as the text of the article that seems to have inspired Emma to sit down for that interview, see Kat Koorey’s transcription in The Hatchet.