Gilt

When Hosea Knowlton’s papers on his case against Lizzie Borden were published by the Fall River Historical Society in 1994, eager students of the Borden case learned that Knowlton had been sent a letter by Dr. Frank Draper, a prominent Boston medical examiner and Harvard professor, on May 31, 1893, less than a week before the trial against Lizzie was set to begin. In the letter, Draper told Knowlton that when he recently examined Abby Borden’s skull, he made what he called an “important” discovery.

“On one of the cuts in Mrs. Borden’s skull, near the right ear, there is a very small but unmistakable deposit of the gilt metal with which hatchets are ornamented when they leave the factory. This deposit (Dr. Cheever confirmed the observations fully) means that the hatchet used in killing Mrs. Borden was a new hatchet, not long out of the store … Perhaps this is not new information either to you or Dr. Dolan; it was new to me and seemed important enough to justify immediate conveyance to you. The shining deposit can be seen with the naked eye; it is plainly visible with the use of a lens, when once its situation is indicated.”

This information about what Draper found adhered to Abby’s skull was likely not welcome news to Hosea Knowlton, who had already prepared a case based on the rusty old Handleless Hatchet found in the Borden cellar as the potential murder weapon tying Lizzie to the crime. Certainly, Draper’s finding never came to light during the trial, so we don’t know how it was eventually understood at the time. And it was obviously never revealed to the press.

In another avenue of speculation, perhaps the Crowe Hatchet, found on the roof of a neighboring barn midway through the trial, was the actual murder weapon. That hatchet, according to the Associated Press, showed “a slight coloring of gilt … which would either indicate that the hatchet was at one time used as an ornament or was quite new when lost or discarded.” Draper’s letter thus seemed to add credence to the theory that the Crowe Hatchet could have indeed been the murder weapon.

As these theories, spurred by the new information on the gilt in Abby’s skull, were discussed and passed along, a vital piece of that information seemed to get lost: the understanding that Draper made this discovery nearly ten months after the murders, and not during the autopsy on Abby conducted the week after the murders. Many people assumed, and still do, that the gilt was found in Abby’s actual wounds; or, as the author of Whack Job put it, that the gilt was “found in Abby’s ruined right ear.” In actuality, the substance was found long after Abby’s head had been removed, and the flesh rendered from the skull by being boiled vigorously in a lobster pot and scraped away. It would have been all but impossible for any gilt to still be clinging to the edge of the missing bone in Abby’s flesh-less skull after such an intensive process. So, how to explain Draper’s finding?

The answer also lies in the Knowlton Papers, which features a previous letter from Draper to Knowlton, dated May 28th, several days earlier, in which he tells Knowlton, “Two of the medical experts for the defense, by the way, have made their appearance …” and “both these gentlemen studied the skulls and bony fragments at my office, while I sat in a room nearby within easy call, but not where I could hear conversation when their door was shut.”

While the defense did not call Drs. Dwight and Richardson, their own medical experts, to testify at the trial, clearly the defense had permission to examine the skulls. We also hear from Arthur Phillips, a lawyer with the defense team, of an “experiment” they themselves conducted during their examination of the skulls.

“Many cuts appeared within its bony structure and at one place the hatchet cut was plainly nitched on both sides of the inner part of the skull. Mr. Adams was about to claim to the jury that the cutting must have been done by a weapon of very unusual make and was so confident of his position that he went to a nearby hardware store and purchased a hatchet which seemed to be of the correct size and planned to exhibit it to the jury and compare it with the notches as an illustration to his claim … He was urged by Governor Robinson to make a private test first and reluctantly did so, only to find that the fit was perfect, so that it became clear to us that an ordinary new style of hatchet was used by the murderer.”

Clearly, a new hatchet from a hardware store, likely edged with gilt on the blade as most new hatchets were, was placed into the cuts on the skull during this experiment. This is undoubtedly how the gilt discovered by Draper was left behind. No other medical expert who examined the skulls in the months before the trial, and before Draper got to it, had noticed any gilt that Draper said was plainly visible to the naked eye; meaning it had only recently got itself stuck there. Thus, the gilt in Abby’s skull is not especially good evidence that a “new” hatchet was used on Abby, or that the Crowe hatchet was more likely than any other to the be the actual murder weapon.