Hannah Reagan’s Story

On August 25th, 1892, nearly three weeks after the Borden murders shocked the city of Fall River, and two weeks after the arrest of Lizzie Borden for those murders, the Fall River Globe (a rabid anti-Lizzie newspaper) published the following salacious story:

DID EMMA CONFESS?

“You Gave Me Away,” Said Lizzie In The Matron’s Room.

Yesterday, the eve of the [preliminary hearing] of Lizzie Borden for the murder of her father, was eventful in its startling and sensational happenings … Early yesterday forenoon Mr. Jennings called at the Borden house. He had a long and earnest consultation with Miss Emma. It is reported that at this consultation Mr. Jennings demanded to know of Emma whether or not Lizzie had talked with her as to [Lizzie’s] guilt or innocence. Subsequent developments go to show that Emma felt the awful responsibility which rested upon her and that she gave Mr. Jennings some intimation of the true inwardness of this crime …

In the afternoon Emma came to visit her sister and was received with a coolness which bespoke the mental condition of the prisoner. Mrs. Reagan, [the police matron with charge of Lizzie], witnessed the scene and heard the short conversation which followed.

As Emma entered, Lizzie turned her back upon her. To Lizzie it appeared that her sister and nearest friend had deserted her. A moment of silence passed, and then Lizzie turned face to face with Emma and said:

“You gave me away in this matter, didn’t you, Emma?”

Emma replied—“No Lizzie.”

Then Lizzie said, “Yes you did, and I know it, but I will never give in one inch,” and she illustrated her words, measuring an inch on her forefinger, by placing her thumb against it.

The conversation was dropped here and Emma was visibly overcome with sorrow. An hour after this happened a Globe reporter knocked at the door of the matron’s room. It opened and Rev. Mr. Jubb, Mrs. Brigham, and Lizzie could be seen. The prisoner sat with her back to the door rocking back and forth and Mr. Jubb was in front and near to her in earnest conversation.

Mrs. Reagan said that Lizzie was very much agitated, and she (the matron) did not wish to be disturbed. Her talk with the Globe man was short but it confirmed the truthfulness of the conversation between the two sisters as above quoted.

Lizzie Supporters Up in Arms

This story in the paper, which appeared the morning Lizzie’s preliminary hearing began, caused a sensation, and apparently a great deal of grief to Lizzie and Emma, who immediately swore it wasn’t true. After court adjourned for the day, Lizzie’s friends, led by Reverend Buck, asked Hannah Reagan if she’d repeated any such story to Edwin Porter, the reporter who wrote it, and she denied she had. They asked her if she’d be willing to sign an affidavit denying the story, and she told them she would sign it if the police marshal would allow it. Reverend Buck then wrote up an affidavit disowning the story, and together he went with Mrs. Reagan to Marshal Hilliard’s office, where a number of reporters were gathered.

Hilliard was heard by reporters telling Mrs. Reagan that if she signed that affidavit it would be against his express orders. He then told her that if she had anything to say about the matter she could say it in court under oath. This edict upset Lizzie’s friends gathered at the police station in support of her, and it especially incensed Andrew Jennings, Lizzie’s lawyer, who had arrived in the middle of the snafu. He had strong words with Hilliard, a clash that the reporters witnessed and wrote up for the next day’s news.

Over the next several days, a number of reporters continued asking the police matron if the story had been true, and Mrs. Reagan denied it every time. Yet, by the time the trial arrived the following June, Mrs. Reagan had decided to stand by her story to Edwin Porter. She told the jury she was in the daily company of Lizzie for about nine or ten days and was asked by the prosecution about the events of August 24th, the day before the preliminary hearing. She began by saying she had been tidying up “the matron’s room,” where Lizzie was being held, when her sister Emma arrived.

Q: Now will you go on and describe in your own way what occurred after Miss Emma came, the time that elapsed, and all that was said and done?

A: Miss Emma Borden came to my room about twenty minutes to nine on the 24th day of August, and I let her in, and she spoke to her sister Lizzie, and I left the two women talking together, and I went into a toilet room about four feet from where Miss Lizzie Borden was lying on a couch. I heard very loud talk, and I came to my door, and it was Miss Lizzie Borden; she was lying on her left side, and her sister Emma was talking to her and bending right over her, and Lizzie says, “Emma, you have gave me away, haven’t you?” She says, “No, Lizzie, I have not.” “You have,” she says, “and I will let you see I won’t give in one inch,” and she sat right up and put up her finger, and I stood in the doorway looking at both of them ...

Q: What occurred then?

A: Lizzie Borden lay right down on the couch on her left side and faced out the window and closed her eyes, and Miss Emma got a chair; I gave her a chair, and she sat right down beside her sister, and that was in the forenoon, I should say then after nine o’clock.

Q: How long did they continue to sit together?

A: They sat there till Mr. Jennings came to my door, somewhere about eleven o’clock, or after eleven o’clock.

Q: During the time that the two sisters sat that way did Miss Lizzie speak to her sister at all?

A: No sir, not anymore that forenoon.

After listening to this testimony of Hannah Reagan, Andrew Jennings stood to begin his cross-examination. And it seemed clear from his questioning that he did not remember the morning in the same way she did.

Q: [By Mr. Jennings] How long did Miss Emma remain that morning in the room?

A: She remained, sir, from twenty minutes of nine o’clock until you came to the door.

Q: And where did she go then?

A: She went right home, I suppose. She went out of the room and downstairs, and you asked her when she was going out, “Have you told all to Lizzie?” and she says, “Yes, all I had to tell.” That was the words you said to her when she was going out.

Q: I said that?

A: Yes, sir; you did. I was standing right beside you when you said it.

Q: Well, what happened after that?

A: [You] went into the room and stayed there until half past twelve o’clock, and came out and said you was all through and I could go in, and I went in …

Q: Did Miss Emma come again that day?

A: In the afternoon, sir …

Q: Did anybody else come in the afternoon?

A: Let me see. Why, yes, there was lots of visitors came in the afternoon …

Q: Have you any recollection about it?

A: No, I was taken away with this trouble so much that it upset me, Mr. Jennings.

Q: You were so taken up with this trouble that happened in the morning that you cannot recall what took place in the afternoon? … Can you tell us anything that you recollect about that day except what you have already related?

A: Only that Miss Borden was more excited when you left the room than she was before you came into it.

It was at this point in his cross-examination that Jennings tried to get Mrs. Reagan to recall what he’d been told by Lizzie’s friends who visited her that afternoon, the same afternoon that Mrs. Reagan said she was too upset by the morning’s events to remember.

Q: Now let me go a little further and see if I can refresh your recollection. Don’t you remember that Mrs. Holmes was there in the afternoon and you had some conversation about an egg?

A: I remember about the egg, but I could not tell you if it was that afternoon or not.

Q: What was it about the egg?

A: The breaking of an egg … We were talking in the afternoon, me and Lizzie Borden, and I says, “I can tell you one thing you can’t do,” and she says, “Tell me what it is, Mrs. Reagan,” I says, “Break an egg, Miss Borden,” and she says, “Well I can break an egg,” and I says, “Not the way I would tell you to break it.” … So I told her the way I wanted her to break it, and I said I would bet her a dollar that she couldn’t, and she said she would bet me a quarter, and in the afternoon someone fetched an egg and gave it to Lizzie. Miss Emma Borden was sitting beside her, and I told Miss Emma to get a little aways away, “because,” I said, “if she will break the egg the wrong way it will destroy your dress,” and [Lizzie] got it in her hands, and she couldn’t break it and she says, “That’s the first thing that I undertook to do that I never could.”

Q: Was Mrs. Brigham there that afternoon?

A: Yes sir. There were parties in the room that afternoon.

Q: Didn’t you have a pleasant time that afternoon, all of you?

A: Yes, sir, we laughed about the egg, the breaking of the egg.

After getting Mrs. Reagan to admit that she’d had a pleasant afternoon laughing with Lizzie and friends, he returned to the subject of “the quarrel.”  

Q: Was the story of the quarrel published the next morning in the paper?

A: I don’t know, sir. I didn’t see it ... I heard rumors of it.

Q: Weren’t you asked about it by reporters?

A: Yes, sir.

Q: Weren’t you asked whether or not there was any truth in it?

A: I didn’t tell them, sir, whether there was any truth in it or not …

Q: Did you tell any reporter that it was all a lie?

A: No, sir, I didn’t.

Q: That there was not a word of truth in it?

A: No, sir, I didn’t.

Q: Did Mr. Buck come to you in the court room and ask you about it? … Didn’t you tell him that it wasn’t true?

A: No, sir, I didn’t.

Q: Did you ever speak to Mrs. Holmes about it?

A: No, sir …

Q: Subsequent to that, was a paper drawn up for you to sign … in relation to this story? Was it read to you?

A: Yes, sir.

Q: Can you tell us what it was?

A: No, sir, I can’t …

Q: Will you listen to this and see if this sounds anything like it:

“This is to certify that my attention has been called to a report said to have been made by me in regard to a quarrel between Lizzie and her sister Emma, in which Lizzie said to Emma, ‘You have given me away,’ etc., and that I expressly and positively deny that any such conversation took place, and I further deny that I ever heard anything that could be construed as a quarrel between the two sisters.”

Q: Does that sound anything like it?

A: No, sir. I don’t remember one word that Mr. Buck said to me that evening.

Q: Will you say that that was not the substance of the paper that was presented to you?

A: I couldn’t tell you, sir … He read it in the entry-way, and I think there was about fifty or sixty men standing around … I didn’t understand one word that Mr. Buck said to me, but if you will let me, I will explain it to you.

Q: No, I will ask you questions and then you can explain afterwards, if it is proper. Did you then express willingness to sign it if Marshal Hilliard was willing that you should?

A: No, sir.

Q: Just say what [Reverend Buck] said to you when he brought the paper?

A: The Court was going on in the afternoon and Mr. Buck came in and said, “Mrs. Reagan, there is a report going round,” he says, “that there has been trouble between Miss Emma Borden and her sister.” I said, “Where did you hear it?” He says, “It has come from the papers.” I said, “You can’t believe all you read in the paper.” He went away and came back again and called me out of my room on to the landing and all the reporters were standing there and he turned round and he says, “Mrs. Reagan, I want you to sign this paper … If you will sign this paper it will make everything all right between Miss Lizzie Borden and her sister.” I said, “Will you give me that paper and I will take it to Marshal Hilliard?” He says, “No, I can’t give it to you, but I will go downstairs with you,” and I went downstairs with him.

Q: Now tell us all that was said or done in the Marshal’s office.

A: Mr. Buck went in and showed this paper to Marshal Hilliard, and I stood outside the rail. Marshal Hilliard said, “You go to your room and I will attend to this business; and you, Mr. Buck, attend to yours.”

Q: Anything else said?…

A: If I had anything to say, I should say it in the Court.

Q: Didn’t I [Jennings] come in afterwards and say to Marshal Hilliard, “I understand that this woman is willing to sign this paper, unless you object?”

A: I don’t remember what you said.

Q: Was it not then, Mrs. Reagan, that he said that your story, whatever story you had to tell, you would tell in Court, when I said that to him?

A: I don’t remember seeing you. You might have been there among the folks, but I don’t remember seeing you there with Marshal Hilliard.

Q: Didn’t you hear me tell him that if he refused to let you sign that paper, I would publish him to the world?

A: No, sir.

A Thorough Rebuttal

Hannah Reagan’s testimony, which had started strong but ended shakily, was soon to be impeached, thoroughly and embarrassingly, by a troop of defense witnesses.

When Emma Borden took the stand, Jennings asked her if there was any truth to the story that Mrs. Reagan had just told on the stand about overhearing a quarrel between her and Lizzie. Emma asserted she absolutely did not quarrel with Lizzie that morning, and absolutely did not hear Lizzie saying anything like, ‘You have given me away.’ Nor did Lizzie say that she wouldn’t give an inch or any other such thing that Hannah Reagan had just claimed.

“That morning or any morning?” Jennings asked. “No time, not any time,” Emma answered, then added that there hadn’t been any trouble, or anything that be construed as a quarrel, in the matron’s room between her and Lizzie the entire time her sister was kept there. Jennings finished with, “Now when you went out, did I say to you, ‘Have you told her all?’  And you say, ‘Everything’?” Emma answered, “No sir, you did not.”

The next witness onto the stand to address Mrs. Reagan’s story was John Manning, a reporter for the New York Herald and Associated Press. He said the story of the alleged quarrel had appeared in the papers on the morning of the 25th and he went to Hannah Reagan that evening and asked her if the story was true or not. Manning said she replied, “There was nothing in it.”

The next reporter called to the stand was Thomas Hickey, who also wrote for the Boston Herald and Fall River Globe. He said he went to see Mrs. Reagan in her room at the jail the morning after the story first appeared:

“I remarked something like, ‘I see you are getting yourself in the paper, Mrs. Reagan.’ She laughed and said, ‘yes, but they have got to take it all back.’ … I asked her if there had been a quarrel  and she said, ‘No.’ I asked her if she had repeated any of the words which had appeared in the appear that ‘you gave me away,’ and she said she did not. Then I said, ‘Mrs. Reagan, there is absolutely no truth in the story that was printed?’ And she said, ‘No, sir, no truth at all.’”

When Mrs. Marianna Holmes took the stand, she was asked if she’d discussed the newspaper story about the quarrel with Mrs. Reagan and she said she’d talked about it with her Friday, the morning after the story appeared. Mrs. Holmes testified that Mrs. Reagan had then told her, “No, Mrs. Holmes, it isn’t so for that was the afternoon we were talking about the egg.” Mrs. Holmes added that she heard Mrs. Reagan say she was willing to sign the affidavit refuting the story if the marshal would allow it.

Mr. Charles Holmes next took the stand to confirm he had heard Reverend Buck read the affidavit denying the story to Mrs. Reagan and he had then heard Mrs. Reagan affirm that the affidavit stated the truth and she was willing to sign it. He stayed behind while Buck and Mrs. Reagan went down to the marshal’s office. Another reporter, John Caldwell, took the stand to testify that he specifically heard Marshal Hilliard tell Mrs. Reagan, “If you sign this paper it will be against my express order.”  

Then came Mrs. Mary Brigham, who testified she was waiting in the matron’s room when Mrs. Reagan returned from the marshal’s office that evening. “She sat down in a rocking chair next to me as near as she could and said, “It’s all a lie, from beginning to end. I was willing to sign the paper, but the Marshal wouldn’t let me do it. He told me to go to my room and obey orders. I would rather leave a place than stay where I have been so lied about.” On further cross examination, Mrs. Brigham said she recalled the day of the alleged quarrel, and that a reporter with a “sandy moustache” had come to the matron’s room that afternoon and called Mrs. Reagan away. This reporter was Edwin Porter, who would write the story of the quarrel. Mrs. Brigham said that when Mrs. Reagan returned, the jail matron told her, “That reporter has come after me again and I told him I had nothing to tell him.”

Interestingly, the reporter in question was sitting in the courtroom the entire time, but the prosecution did not call Edwin Porter to the stand to stick up for Hannah Reagan or defend his story as true. One wonders why they chose not to call him, and what he might have said.

Regardless, with Hannah Reagan’s testimony so thoroughly discredited, it is not surprising that Governor Robinson took on a tone of mockery when summing up Mrs. Reagan’s testimony in his closing argument. “They say [Lizzie Borden] murdered these two people because Mrs. Reagan—I forbear almost to mention her name—came up here and told you that those sisters had a quarrel, and that Lizzie said to Emma, “You have given me away.” Gentlemen, if there is anybody given away in this case, it is Mrs. Hannah Reagan, and nobody gave her away but herself.”

In response, Knowlton, ever protective of the veracity of his witnesses, defended Mrs. Reagan and insisted that she was telling the truth about the quarrel between Lizzie and Emma. “That thing took place … The thing happened. Then, as sometimes also happens, and as has happened more than once in this case … a wily reporter, under some guise or other, extracts the facts and publishes them for a sensation in his newspaper the next day. It was an ill-advised thing for Mrs. Reagan to do. It was an unfortunate thing for her to do … But it was done. And I have no question in saying, I am frank enough to say that when that was done, and by anxious and excited friends it was brought to her attention how much damage she had done to the woman in her charge, that she proceeded in many and diverse ways to give the assurance that it was not so. But that was out of the kindness of her heart, not the malice of it. It was because she wanted not to injure this girl; not because she wanted to injure her.” He concluded, “I call your attention to it because I am not willing to let an honest woman go by with a slur such as my distinguished friend in courteous words imposed upon her.”

Knowlton added that if it wasn’t true, then “all the buzzing and excited and eager and anxious crowd” of Lizzie’s friends wouldn’t have “came round in troops to harass Mrs. Reagan into taking it back.” It would have been Lizzie and Emma themselves confronting her because they were the ones who knew what happened. But, said Knowlton, they never came to Mrs. Reagan and said, ‘You have told a lie.’ (Perhaps it didn’t occur to Knowlton that confronting the jail matron who has charge of you and calling her a liar to her face would not be a wise choice.)

In Knowlton’s version of these confounding events, Mrs. Reagan tells numerous people that there was nothing to the story, it wasn’t true, telling lie after lie simply out of the “goodness of her heart”, and yet on the stand she had been a paragon of honesty—even as she was up there, clearly perjuring herself by denying things numerous people swore they heard her say. Meanwhile, in Knowlton’s estimation, Emma was the real liar and by extension Andrew Jennings was lying as well, because Mrs. Reagan claimed words came out of his mouth that from his reaction we know he did not say.    

While it seems likely that Mrs. Reagan did tell Edwin Porter some kind of creative story, it was almost certainly an untrue story, perhaps meant to make herself seem like she had important information that could crack the case. People at the periphery of notorious cases often try to insert themselves into the red hot center of them. All of Mrs. Reagan’s attempts to take back her invented story failed, and with her job on the line, or maybe just to save face, she took the stand and lied yet again. From this far remove, Marshal Hilliard’s earlier refusal to allow her to try to set the record straight seems yet another example of police zeal to make sure the public believed Lizzie guilty. Or, perhaps it was the prosecution that was so desperate to cling to any shred of evidence against Lizzie that they decided to go ahead and put a witness on the stand that they must have known could be easily discredited.

But that’s only one interpretation. Many find themselves believing Hannah Reagan’s tale and consider her a witness to the ugly truth that crept out between the sisters about Lizzie’s responsibility for the deaths of their parents. Like so many other strange and inexplicable chapters in the saga of the Borden murders, we can assign whatever meaning we like to the story told, then recanted, then told again by Mrs. Hannah Reagan, the jail matron who won a quarter from Lizzie Borden with her egg-breaking challenge.