Feud with Abby

By all accounts, Andrew’s small gift property to Abby dramatically shook up the relationships in the Borden family, even if dramatic words were never traded. Both Emma and Lizzie apparently felt personally slighted or devalued by their father offering such largesse to his wife when, in their view at least, he had never been as generous to them. At the inquest, Knowlton introduced the subject to Lizzie, asking her if she and Abby had discussed it. Lizzie answered, “I talked with her about it and said what he did for her, he ought to do for us. That is all the words we had.”

While both sisters claimed they did not make a fuss directly to Andrew, he learned of their displeasure and soon tried to make amends by also gifting them property, the “Borden homestead” on Ferry Street that he had inherited from his own father, a house worth $3,000 at that time. But this gift did not seem to heal the resentment felt by the sisters, for Lizzie never again called Abby “Mother,” something she had done since she was a child. From then on, she addressed Abby only as “Mrs. Borden.” (Emma simply continued to call her stepmother “Abby,” as she always had.)

A Narrative Takes Hold

The prosecution was quick to tell this story in court, portraying Abby as a selfless saint who only wanted to help her sister, and making Lizzie appear to be small-minded for her resentment over it. That Andrew wanted to give his wife this gift, “his faithful wife who has served him thirty years for her board and clothes,” said Knowlton, “who has done his work, who has kept his house, who has reared his children—wants to buy and give to her the interest in a little homestead where her sister lives. How wicked to have found fault with that. How petty to have found fault with it.”

But Knowlton was not content with simply calling Lizzie “wicked” and “petty” for her feelings, he continued building up the conflict for the jury, describing how the passage of time had curdled Lizzie’s resentment toward Abby, turning it into a thick and viscous hatred which demanded nothing less than Abby’s death. After expounding long and dramatically about this hatred, Knowlton acknowledged that Andrew’s gift to Abby was not a reasonable basis for the source of the hatred he insisted she harbored for her stepmother, admitting, “It is hard to believe that mere property would have influenced this belief. We are not obliged to, although it appears that property was that which made or broke the relations of that family, and a small amount of property, too.”

It does seem quite a stretch to believe that Lizzie could have been sucked into a vortex of murderous acrimony over Andrew simply giving his wife half-a-house worth not all that much. It is also curious that being given a house of greater value did not calm her ill feelings toward Abby. This has led to many pronouncements over the years on Lizzie’s shriveled character, her arrogance, her sense of entitlement, her selfishness, her spitefulness.

“The girls never forgave Abby for this treachery,” wrote Fall River-native Victoria Lincoln. “Lizzie talked about this widely all over town; I have never heard it reported that she blamed Andrew for anything but weakness under pressuring. Abby was the villain,” Lincoln added, and remained so in Lizzie’s mind because “Lizzie was jealous. Like Andrew, she loved possessions, but when Andrew had quickly given her half-a-house exactly equivalent to the one that had been his secret gift to her rival, it undid nothing. A woman who opens the bill that should have been sent to the office and learns of the bracelet her husband gave to some girl is not put at ease by the prompt gift of another bracelet, even of one more expensive.”   

In Lincoln’s narrative, Lizzie saw Abby as a rival, inspiring jealousy and feelings of betrayal in Lizzie. Later psychological examinations of Lizzie often hone in on similar themes, with psychiatrist M. Eileen McNamara writing in 1992 that  “a destructive child-parent collation [can be] identified in the problems created by a small gift from a wealthy man … Competition and triangulation with Abby for Andrew’s favors were destructive, [and] we see a confusion of boundaries, where what is due to the wife and what is due to the daughters become confused and blurred.”

In other narratives Lizzie is simply so avaricious and greedy for her father’s money that she cannot bear for Abby to be given even a small fraction of her father’s wealth. Some authors give this idea a different twist, suggesting that Lizzie felt profound fear that Andrew would write a will leaving most of his estate to Abby and leave Lizzie and Emma nothing except crumbs. But are these fair depictions? What is the evidence for how Lizzie actually felt regarding Abby and the property transfer? First, we can look at how Lizzie herself described “the affair,” as both she and Emma called it.

Lizzie’s Side of the Story

On the second day of the inquest, Knowlton asked Lizzie to repeat “the particulars of that trouble that you had with your mother four or five years ago.”

A: [Lizzie] Her father’s house on Ferry Street was for sale …

Q: [Knowlton] Whose father’s house?

A: Mrs. Borden’s father’s house. She had a stepmother and a half-sister, Mrs. Borden did, and this house was left to the stepmother and a half-sister, if I understand it right, and the house was for sale. The stepmother, Mrs. Oliver Gray, wanted to sell it and my father bought out the Widow Gray’s share. She did not tell me and he did not tell me, but some outsiders said he gave it to her; put it in her name. I said if he gave that to her, he ought to give us something. Told Mrs. Borden so. She did not care anything about the house herself. She wanted it so this half-sister could have a home because she had married a man [George Whitehead] that was not doing the best he could and she thought her sister was having a very hard time and wanted her to have a home. And we always thought she persuaded father to buy it. At any rate, he did buy it and I am quite sure she did persuade him. I said what he did for her, he ought to do for his own children. So, he gave us grandfather’s house. That was all the trouble we ever had …

Q: That is all there is to it then?

A: Yes sir.

Q: You had no words with your stepmother then?

A: I talked with her about it and said what he did for her, he ought to do for us. That is all the words we had.

Q: That is the occasion of his giving you the house that you sold back to him?

A: Yes sir.

Note that in telling the story to Knowlton, Lizzie gave her stepmother credit for wanting to help her half-sister remain in her home. She displays understanding of Abby’s selfless motive and seems to be focused primarily on the issue of fairness. “What he did for her he ought to do for his own children.” Although Lizzie repeating that Abby “persuaded” her father to buy the property is a revealing detail and probably gets more to the core of the problem.

Emma was also asked about the matter during the jury trial and corroborated what Lizzie revealed at the inquest. She admitted that she and Lizzie had “found fault” with Andrew’s gift to Abby, and that their father had addressed this by giving them “Grandfather’s house on Ferry Street,” the house they had both been born in. Yet, she also said that while Lizzie remained “cordial” to Abby after the incident, she herself did not, although she did not elaborate on her reasons, and neither was she asked to explain them.

Both Emma and Lizzie describe their so-called feud with Abby the same way, without much emotion attached, as if it was simple math problem that they needed to nudge to come out equitably. But clearly there was more going on beneath the surface of this minor tempest. And there are clues it was not really about money at all. Indeed, the first words Emma spoke about their problems with Abby were the words she spoke at the inquest: “We always felt she wasn’t interested in us.”

At the Heart of the Trouble

At the inquest, Lizzie’s uncle by marriage, Hiram Harrington was also asked to tell what he knew of the trouble between the girls and Abby. Harrington offered his opinion of why Lizzie no longer wanted to call Abby “Mother,” relating it to the property transfer.

A: [Hiram Harrington] Lizzie thought Abby equivocated. I don’t know as I could put enough of it together now, I can just give you an idea. I can’t remember words that were passed at the time, any more than just this much, that she thought Abby equivocated.

Q: About what, did she say?

A: In regard to something about Bertie, that is, Mrs. Whitehead, a half-sister of Mrs. Borden.

It appears that from what Harrington is saying, Lizzie believed Abby had not told the truth about how the property transfer was handled. Perhaps Abby said she never asked Andrew for it, but Lizzie didn’t believe this was the case; she believed Abby had talked Andrew into it. “I’m quite sure she persuaded him to buy it,” said Lizzie. Meanwhile, Lizzie’s friend, Augusta Tripp, confirmed that Lizzie believed Abby had acted deceptively in regard to the property transfer, telling Officer Medley, “Lizzie told me her stepmother claimed not to have any influence with her father. But she believed she did have influence with her father, or he never would have given her stepmother’s half-sister such a very large sum of money.” At the inquest, Augusta expanded on why this “two-faced” behavior from Abby was so upsetting to her friend, saying that Lizzie “could not bear deceitfulness, being such an honorable person as she was, a square person.”

If Abby had indeed deceived Lizzie and Emma about how the property ended up in her name, one can see why Lizzie would feel irritated. But could such mild dishonesty be reason enough for Lizzie to stop calling her “Mother”? Or was there yet a deeper wound being touched there?

There is a measure of insight to be found in Alice Russell’s inquest testimony. When Hosea Knowlton asked her what she knew of the trouble between Lizzie and Abby, Alice didn’t say anything about the property transfer; the problem, in Alice’s opinion, was “nothing further than [Abby] was the stepmother.” Alice then said Lizzie may have thought her “own mother might have had more influence over” her father. When asked to clarify, Alice said, “The father was the head of the house, they had to do as he thought. Mrs. Borden did not control the house; the whole summing up of it was that.”  

Lizzie grew up calling Abby “Mother,” looking at Abby as her mother, and probably as someone who would advocate for her with her father just as a real mother would. But it seems that when push came to shove, Abby did not advocate for Lizzie’s needs and wishes as Lizzie had hoped, with Abby claiming (at least according to Lizzie) that she had no influence on Andrew. Which Lizzie had apparently accepted and believed … until Andrew bought the property Abby’s half-sister lived in and put it in Abby’s name. It then became obvious that while Abby was willing to exercise her influence on her husband on behalf of her half-sister, she had chosen not to exercise that influence on Lizzie and Emma’s behalf. That is not what Lizzie felt a “mother” would do, and it probably hurt her to realize this, to realize that the person she believed was her ally was not really her ally.

Recall that when Knowlton asked Lizzie at the inquest what led to her decision to stop calling Abby “Mother”. She agreed it was at the time of the property transfer, but she herself didn’t use the word “property” or “house” to describe the problem, she described it as “the affair with the stepsister.” That is, the sister that Abby was willing to go to bat for with Andrew, when Abby hadn’t been willing to go to bat for her.

The lack of empathy for Emma and Lizzie from their stepmother was “staggering,” wrote a speaker at the Lizzie Borden Centennial Conference in 1992. “Nowhere is it indicated that Abby interceded for Andrew’s daughters to allow them a more normal life. She never suggested a different lifestyle that would have given the girls, when they were younger, a chance to meet people and have options [which were] denied to them by the setting on Second Street.” Indeed, it appears that consideration for the girls’ well-being rarely played a role in either Abby’s or Andrew’s decision making. Again, in Emma’s words, “We always felt she wasn’t interested in us.”

There are examples of Abby also complaining that Andrew treated his daughters more generously than he treated her, such as when she told her friend, Mrs. Case, that Emma and Lizzie were allowed to spend their $2 per week allowance from Andrew on themselves, while Abby’s equal allowance often had to be spent on items for the household. If Lizzie was raised in a family culture of each man for himself, or each woman for herself, a culture that Abby herself helped create, then how can Lizzie be blamed for seeing through the lens that had been fashioned for her, or for feeling the distress that came with such a cramped view?

Author’s Take

Many think that Lizzie’s complaints about Abby’s “influence” over her father was about her fear for the future, fear that Abby could convince Andrew to disinherit her; however, it seems to me that her complaints were less about the future and more about her pain over the past. I don’t think Lizzie hated Abby so much as she felt hurt by Abby, perhaps even betrayed by Abby. And that is why she stopped calling her “Mother.” In her mind, Abby no longer deserved the title. And when anyone else called Abby her mother, whether the cloak-maker Hannah Gifford or Officer Fleet, it triggered her hurt all over again, and she would correct them. “She is not my mother; she is my stepmother.”

Still, I do not blame those who find Lizzie’s resentment over the property transfer to be small-minded, especially as Lizzie herself seemed to understand that Abby wanted the property not for herself but to help her sister. Lizzie did appear to have a self-centered and over-the-top reaction to what seemed to be a move by Andrew to do a good deed on behalf of his wife. But it was surely a much more complex issue than Lizzie or Emma cared to divulge at the time. And it is almost always the case that, in a family system, the child follows the lead of the adult. Abby became Lizzie’s stepmother when Lizzie was only four years old, and if there was a lack of charity in their relationship, I feel certain it was modelled for Lizzie by Abby. I also feel certain that if Lizzie ultimately did kill Abby (which I personally doubt), it probably had little to do with Andrew’s gift to Abby of half-a-house.