Pail of Bloody Rags

In the hours after Andrew and Abby Borden were found butchered in their home, one police officer after another tromped through the house, from attic to cellar, searching for evidence that might help them discover the identity of the culprit. And every officer who stepped down into the cellar to examine axes, hatchets, and various other items—including Officers Fleet, Medley, Doherty, Hyde, Allen, and Mullaly—testified to seeing one other interesting item: a pail sitting by the sink, in which floated three bloodied “cloths.” According to the trial testimony of George Allen, Mullaly pulled the cloths up out of the pail to examine them.

That was enough for the law enforcement officers, who apparently didn’t ask Lizzie any more questions about it. At the preliminary hearing, Dr. William Dolan, the county medical examiner who was one of the first “officials” in the house that day, testified that he had also seen the pail with the cloths and had “examined them casually.” He then told Officer Mullaly to carry them to the police station. When asked what was done with them there, Dolan answered. “Nothing. They were left downstairs in the marshal’s office, and nothing further done with them.” Why not? Because after examining them again, Dolan was “satisfied that they had no connection with the case.”

When the subject came up in the jury trial, the officers all confirmed to seeing the pail, but were asked nothing more than that. As Governor Robinson summed it up during his examination of Officer Fleet, “It is agreed that that pail contained the napkins which had been worn within a day or two by the defendant—the ordinary monthly sickness—and as to that fact that is all we propose to put in. We do not care to go into the details. It is also agreed that the sickness ended Wednesday night.”

It is mind-boggling to us today that in the Victorian era most people, especially men, were so squeamish about dealing with the normal process of menstruation that even a brutal murder could not compel police to consider a pail of blood-soaked rags near the crime scene as possibly connected to the murders. Yet, by all accounts, they did not. Which does not mean that those who have considered the case since are equally satisfied there was no connection.

For those who are mystified by how Lizzie, if she was indeed guilty, managed to make any trace of blood disappear from her person within minutes of Andrew’s murder, the pail of blood-soaked cloths provides an easy answer to that dilemma. Today, many an observer wonders if Lizzie was able to take advantage of male discomfort around menstruation to “get away with murder.”

Yet, one also wonders if police had considered the possibility that it could have been Andrew or Abby’s blood on those cloths, would they have been able to prove it one way or the other back in 1892? Forensic blood typing didn’t come along until 1902, when it was first used in France, so they wouldn’t have been able tell exactly who the blood came from. But what about being able to tell if it was menstrual blood or not? When Dr. Edward Wood, the expert at Harvard who analyzed all the blood evidence in the Borden case, was asked on the stand if he could determine if the pinpoint of blood he found on Lizzie’s petticoat had come from regular blood or menstrual blood, he said could not make that determination. However, if he had a larger sample, he would have presumably been able to identify the endometrial cells that come along for the ride with the shedding of menstrual blood. If he had found any such cells swimming in that bucket, Lizzie might enjoy an easier presumption of innocence today. Or, perhaps not, as there would always be the possibility that Andrew and Abby’s blood was in the bucket alongside menstrual blood. She could have used an unused menstrual napkin to clean herself and dropped it in the pail along with her previously used ones.

Still, it would be fair to say that if Wood had tested the contents and hadn’t found any telltale menstrual cells, Lizzie might not have been so easily acquitted. But that didn’t happen. Regardless, the idea of covering up blood evidence with the “excuse” of menstruation remains an interesting possibility to some, and it so frequently shows up in books and novels which portray Lizzie as guilty that it’s worth examining.

Through the Lens of Guilt

One of the biggest obstacles for accepting Lizzie as the perpetrator of the murders has always been the lack of any evidence of blood on her skin or her dress (or anywhere else in the house) in the minutes after Andrew’s murder. The pail in the cellar helps remove that obstacle. If Lizzie used little cloths meant for menstrual blood to wipe away any telltale blood spatters, she would have been able to hide them in plain sight without worry of discovery.

This theory is made more believable when one takes into account the difference between Lizzie and Bridget’s answers to police about how long the blood-soaked napkins had been sitting in the cellar. Lizzie claimed the napkins in the pail had been sitting by the sink for several days, while, according to Officer Medley, “Bridget said she had not noticed the pail until that day [Thursday], and it could not have been there two days before or she would have seen it and put the contents in the wash.” Technically, Bridget did the wash on Monday, three days before, but either way, she seems not to have noticed the pail before Thursday.   

Others find it suspicious that Lizzie seems to have so quickly informed Dr. Bowen that she was menstruating. It smacks of anticipating the question from police and wanting to head off questions, which it apparently did. In the end, that pail of blood-stained cloths seems far too glaring of a possibility to ignore.

Through the Lens of Innocence

Many of the officers investigating the Borden murders suspected very early on that Lizzie was the guilty party, and yet they never voiced any doubt, at least not in any extant records, that the bloodied cloths in the pail were connected to menstruation. After all, there is about a 20 percent chance at any given time that a woman of child-bearing age is going to be on her period. It is not difficult to believe that Lizzie was indeed menstruating, or at least recently was, and that those rags were left over from her cycle, and soaking before the next opportunity to be washed.

During the trial, Robinson conducted a lengthy cross examination of Officer Hyde about his statement that he had seen Lizzie (through the cellar window from where he stood outside in the yard) twice go down into the cellar the night of the murders. The first time, she was accompanied by Alice, to empty a “toilet pail” into the water closet, then fill it up with water and go back upstairs. The second time she went down alone and “stooped down” by the sink for less than minute. Robinson reminded the officer that he had already testified to seeing the pail of bloody rags by the sink earlier that day, clearly an effort to let the jury know that Lizzie’s second trip down had something to do with menstruation. Although Robinson had earlier declared that it was “agreed the sickness ended Wednesday night,” one could reasonably guess that Lizzie might still have had a final used cloth or two to deal with. The judge who later gave the jury their instructions drove this point home, saying, “Taking again her own sickness at that time, the fact that that pail was standing  right by the sink—I am not going to make any suggestions, but I am quite certain that you will guess what she was there for. I will leave it there.” So again, no one, not the doctors who were first on the scene, not law enforcement, not the prosecution, not even the judges on the bench, ever suggested Lizzie could have been lying about the contents of the bucket.

As for the discrepancy reported by Officer Medley between Lizzie and Bridget’s version of how long the pail had been sitting in the cellar, Medley unfortunately does not report whether he clarified with Bridget whether she had first seen the pail by the sink before the murders on Thursday or after the murders, which would seem to be a crucial point. But one assumes that Medley, who clearly was already suspicious of Lizzie and eager to find proof of her guilt (as evidenced by his trip up to the barn for his dust experiment), would have specifically asked the maid that question. And, as Medley says that Bridget pointed out only that she hadn’t seeing the pail two days earlier, and did not make it a point to say she hadn’t seen it earlier in the morning, it seems safe to assume that she had indeed noticed it there before the murders.

Either way, when answering the question of “how long” the cloths were in the pail, Lizzie may have been thinking about how long she had been on her period and using the pail for soiled napkins rather than the exact day she carried the pail down to the cellar. As it never came up at the inquest, the preliminary hearing, or the trial, it appears the prosecution accepted some kind of innocent explanation for the discrepancy between the two women.

One can try to imagine that Lizzie did indeed use those rags to wipe from herself evidence of murders that she committed, and then, with “the cunning and deftness” of her sex, in Knowlton’s words, left those murder clean-up rags sitting out in the cellar, safe in the assumption officers would not question her too closely about them if she hid behind her “monthly illness.” But this prescribes to her a sophisticated foresight of how police officers would respond to the ruse, when just about everything else she claimed (see the Note story) or allegedly did (see prussic acid) showed a glaring lack of foresight for a supposedly cunning murderer. It also would have been a high-risk gamble on which to stake her claim of innocence. Then again, murdering her parents in broad daylight, over an hour apart, while the maid was going in and out, would also have been a high-risk gamble, so what’s one more?

Author’s Take

When I look at this interesting “evidence” that was abandoned to keep to the standards of propriety at the time, I realize Lizzie could have been both menstruating and be guilty. Those cloths in the bucket could have been menstrual napkins, and she could have swung that hatchet in a way that avoided having much blood clean-up to do (see Blood Evidence and Prince Albert coat.) There was a sink right off the kitchen, near the back door, she could have washed any remnants of blood from herself in that sink without having to leave telltale bloody rags behind or take the time to run down to the cellar. I suspect she would have needed a mirror upstairs to check her appearance more than she needed the pail downstairs.

Which is why the bloodied rags in the bucket, which seem so suspicious to others, practically shouts innocence to me. As a woman who has felt the burn of embarrassment when others have stumbled upon my own used menstrual products, and knowing  the embarrassment would be even more pronounced for a woman of that era, it seems to me the last thing Lizzie expected was to have her private bodily business so exposed to the view of a troop of men who would then carry the pail off to the police station. If she had been planning murders guaranteed to fill her house with police officers, I expect she would have made an effort to make the rags less visible to protect her dignity. But that’s me, and again, we see how different people bring their own experiences to how they view the case.