Lizzie’s Relationship with Andrew

When the District Attorney of Bristol County, Hosea Knowlton, brought Lizzie Borden to trial for the 1892 murders of Andrew and Abby Borden, he knew that Lizzie had a not-so-secret dislike for her stepmother that he could amplify into a motive for killing her. Yet, it wasn’t so easy to come up with a motive to kill her father. She had never said an ill word about him; in fact, they were known to be fond of each other in their own reserved Victorian New England way. The best he could do, beyond weakly hinting there might have been a money motive, was suggest she had no choice but to kill the father she loved because he would know she killed Abby. Lizzie’s attorneys didn’t dignify this absurd claim with any kind of defense.

What her attorneys did do was point out, again and again, that Andrew died with a ring on his finger, a ring that Lizzie had once worn but had given him “ten or fifteen years” earlier, said Emma. Andrew didn’t wear a wedding ring, but he did wear Lizzie’s ring. Of course, the prosecution ignored this fact; it conflicted with the story they were eager to tell of a family bitterly divided against itself, with Andrew and Abby on one side of many locked doors, and Emma and Lizzie on the other.

Indeed, the story of a household simmering with tensions was so compellingly told by Knowlton that in the years after Lizzie was acquitted, it solidified into the foundation of the mythology that spun itself around Lizzie and the murders. Most every book about the crimes, and certainly every onscreen version created of them, shows us the same spoiled and entitled Lizzie, spewing hateful words about Abby and struggling mightily against her father’s tyrannical control, all while he punishes her for her longings for freedom with cruel deeds like killing her beloved pet pigeons. But other than some mild complaining by Lizzie and Emma about their stepmother that was not all that unusual for a stepfamily, that depiction of the Borden household was largely invented by the prosecution to convince a jury to find Lizzie guilty.

In reality, there was no credible evidence that Lizzie and her father were ever at odds. Dozens and dozens of people who knew the family were interviewed by police and reporters, and while several reported having heard rumors that Abby’s stepdaughters felt resentment toward her (because of a property transfer to Abby five years earlier), most told police that from what they themselves knew, the family seemed to get along normally. Furthermore, they were all certain that Andrew and Lizzie were devoted to each other. Well, all except one: Hiram Harrington, Lizzie’s uncle by marriage.

Hiram Takes the Spotlight

In the first day or two after the murders, as mystified police were homing in on Lizzie as their suspect, reporters were scrambling to find anyone who could tell them what they knew of the family dynamics. They hit the jackpot with Hiram Harrington, the husband of Andrew’s sister, Lurana. Even though Andrew openly loathed his brother-in-law, and would not allow him to cross the threshold into the Borden house, Harrington was eager to tell reporters exactly what he likely thought the police wanted to hear. He hadn’t been in the same room with Andrew and Lizzie together for years, and certainly neither father or daughter liked him enough to confide in him; yet, he spoke darkly of “constant disputes” between father and daughter over money, claiming the girls didn’t think they were “allowed enough.” He also blamed most of the strife on Lizzie.

“Lizzie did most of the demonstrative contention, as Emma is very quiet and unassuming, and would feel very deeply any disparaging or angry word from her father. Lizzie, on the contrary, was haughty and domineering with the stubborn will of her father and bound to contest for her rights. There were many animated interviews between father and daughter on this point. Lizzie is of a repellent disposition, and after an unsuccessful passage with her father would become sulky and refuse to speak to him for days at a time.”

This negative characterization of Lizzie sounded convincing coming from a family member; however, even the reporter who telegraphed the interview to New York World found it suspiciously over-the-top and added a note to his editor: “Mr. Harrington is embittered against the family and does not hesitate to make startling statements.” After reading the story in the paper, the police took his statement and a few days later he was summoned to appear at the inquest. But once under oath, Hiram said not a word about any difficulty between Lizzie and Andrew. In fact, he said nothing negative about Lizzie at all. He simply related the well-known story about how Lizzie had lost respect for Abby over the property transfer of her sister’s house because, said Harrington, Lizzie believed Abby “equivocated,” or had been deceitful. Getting nothing he could use against Lizzie, Knowlton ended the questioning quickly, and did not call Harrington to the stand again, either at the preliminary hearing or the trial. Even reporters seemed to steer clear of him from that point on.

Yet, the damage done to Lizzie by his initial interview remained, and his characterization of her has been quoted repeatedly by authors painting their own negative portraits of Lizzie, the axe murderess, who so resented Andrew that she went after his sleeping head with an axe. Testimony by Alice Russell about Emma and Lizzie’s desire “to be cultured girls” but bumping up against Andrew’s lack of financial support for such ambitions has also been used to add strokes of color to such portraits. Since Alice Russell was a confidant to both Emma and Lizzie, perhaps it would be clarifying to examine what she had to say.

Alice Russell’s Perspective

When questioned by Knowlton at the inquest, Alice offered her insights into the relationships within the family. When asked, “Were [Lizzie’s] relations with her father cordial?” she replied, “So far as I know. I never saw anything different.” Knowlton continued to probe.

Q: Were they congenial?

A: I do not suppose they would be—knowing their different natures.

Q: The different nature of father and mother and Lizzie?

A: Yes, each of them.

Q: What was the difference in their nature?

A: Mr. Borden was a plain living man with rigid ideas, and very set. They were young girls. He had earned his money, and he did not care for the things that young women in their position naturally would; and he looked upon those things—I don’t know just how to put it.

Q: He did not appreciate girls?

A: No, I don’t think he did.

Q: Their ideas were more modern than his with regard to living, do you mean?

A: Yes, sir.

Q: How did you get this, from the girls talk, or what you observed?

A: From what I observed. Everybody knew what Andrew Borden’s ideas were. He was a very plain living man; he did not care for anything different. It always seemed to me as if he did not see why they should care for anything different.

Q: Did they complain about it?

A: Yes, they used to think it ought to be different, there was no reason why it should not be. They used to think it might be different.

Q: Lizzie or Emma, or both?

A: Both.

Q: There was never any wrangling between them?

A: No, I never heard any. They had quite refined ideas, and they would like to have been cultured girls, and would like to have had different advantages, and it would be natural for girls to express themselves that way. I think it would have been unnatural if they had not.

Q: He did not give them the advantages of education that they thought they ought to have had?

A: I don’t know, as it is just that; but people cannot do and have unless they have ample means to do it.

Alice Russell was pointing out the differences in priorities between the sisters and the elder Bordens and how that sometimes frustrated both. But she also made it clear that such generational differences were nothing out of the ordinary and rather to be expected. Yes, Lizzie and Emma would have preferred a less “plain-living” lifestyle than their set-in-his-ways father; as Alice said, “It would have been unnatural if they had not.” But, Alice stated that this was her own opinion of the matter, drawn from her own observations, and not due to any open contention or “wrangling” between Lizzie and her father, as claimed by Harrington.

Numerous others who spoke to the press likewise said that they had never observed any signs of discord between father and daughter. In fact, they claimed quite the opposite, and considered Andrew and Lizzie to be very fond of each other.  

A Doting Father

Despite Andrew’s blind spot about the longings of his adult daughters, he seems to have made plentiful efforts to show he cared. Rather than the miserly skinflint he is portrayed as in Borden mythology, he was actually financially generous with Lizzie and Emma. He regularly gave them stocks to either hold or sell as they saw fit. He paid for seamstresses to custom make their wardrobes. And of course, he paid a full-time live-in domestic servant so that neither his wife nor his daughters had to do housework. (Lizzie and Emma confirmed this at the inquest, saying they only did what they wanted to do). Andrew also gave them spending money equal to what he gave his wife.

Further, when he learned that Emma and Lizzie were taken aback that he had bought half of Abby’s sister’s house and deeded it to Abby—“what he did for you he ought to do for his own children,” said Lizzie—Andrew soon deeded a house of equal value to Emma and Lizzie. It was the Ferry Street house Lizzie had been born in, the house he had inherited from his own father. The girls were then able to collect rent from the tenants in the house.

A few years later, Andrew sent Lizzie on a lavish 19-week Grand Tour of Europe, which must have cost tens of thousands in today’s dollars. Charles Cook, his business manager, told Andrew Jennings that while Lizzie was away on the trip, Andrew would get letters from Lizzie “once a week I think …  and always seemed pleased when he got one—used to talk about it afterward.”

One of Lizzie’s closest friends, Mrs. Mary Brigham, explained to the Boston Post, “Mr. Borden was, as they say, not a demonstrative man, but he loved his daughters and showed it at such times when they came back after being away. He did not like them to be away from home.” She then explained his reaction when Lizzie returned from her trip to Europe.

“On the night Lizzie arrived the family had given her up and Mr. and Mrs. Borden had gone to bed. Lizzie was very tired and only spoke a few words to Emma that night and retired. The next morning Mr. Borden found her steamer trunk in the hall and bounded up the stairs three at a time to see and greet her, and Lizzie told me that her hand ached all day he pressed it so hard. Going downtown he met a man who said to him: ‘Well, I would guess that someone had come home judging from your bright face this morning.’”

Andrew to His Daughters’ Rescue

In the months before the murders, we see still more signs of Andrew’s regard for Lizzie. When the house was painted in April, he turned over the choice of paint color to Lizzie, rather than his wife, and instructed the painter to do what Lizzie wanted. The painter testified that Lizzie came out to the barn at six in the morning to supervise the mixing of the color and to brush paint on the side of the house herself to test it. (Which is how her new Bedford Cord dress became so paint-stained that she ended up burning it.)

In July, Emma and Lizzie were having trouble with the Ryan family, tenants to whom they themselves had rented half the Ferry street house. (Mrs. Ryan told reporters that she had picked up the key from Lizzie herself.) The Ryans were soon breaking the rules as to number of inhabitants allowed and creating noise to the point that the other longtime tenant in the house moved out. We don’t know whether Andrew offered to buy the house back so he could deal with the troublesome tenants, or they asked him to take it back, but Lizzie first went to Charles Cook to ask his opinion of the value. We don’t know what Cook told her, but we do know that Andrew bought the house from them for $5,000, more than it was said to be worth, and Lizzie deposited her half of the proceeds, $2,500 (the equivalent of over $90,000 in today’s money) in her own bank account exactly three weeks before the murders.

Thanks to caustic comments from Hiram Harrington about the Borden sisters’ lack of financial acumen, some interpret this sale of the house to their father as the girls being too lazy to be bothered to manage their rental; however, a more likely explanation is that Andrew simply came to the rescue of his daughters when they were overwhelmed by their difficult tenants. One of the first things he did after taking ownership was to evict the Ryan family, and, according to newspaper accounts, they were so verbally abusive to Andrew in front of witnesses that they were investigated by police for his murder. Either way, Andrew saved his daughters from that unpleasant experience, and at the same time made it possible for them to have a decent sum of money they could call their own.

It appears that Andrew was also ready to buy a new house, as Mrs. Brigham told a Boston Post reporter during an August 20th interview. She noted that Andrew knew of Emma and Lizzie’s wish to move to a house on the Hill and “told them only a short time ago to look for a house in this neighborhood.” Whether he intended to move the entire family or give it to his daughters to live in on their own is unknown.

Mrs. Brigham’s assertion is backed up by a professional colleague of Andrew’s, William Chace of Durfee and Chase, who told Andrew Jennings the following: “Mr. AJB came to him after William Mason died and wanted the first show at the William Mason estate if it came to market, said he was getting older. Then another time while walking by there he asked about it again and said he was getting old and wanted a nice place for his daughters.”

And, of course, there was that ring on Andrew’s finger. Once Lizzie gave it to him, he never took it off. If they truly had a contentious relationship as Harrington claimed, a question never answered by those who think Lizzie guilty is this: Why was Andrew still wearing that gift from his daughter, clearly full of sentimental value, on the day of his death?

A Devoted Daughter

No one investigating Lizzie for the murder seems to have asked Lizzie about her relationship with Andrew or how she felt about him. At the inquest, Hosea Knowlton asked her how she felt about her stepmother, but did not ask about her relationship with her father. And, of all the other witnesses at the inquest, he only asked two, Dr. Bowen and Alice Russell, about Andrew and Lizzie’s “relations,” and heard that there were no signs of strife between the two. The question didn’t come up again in any court proceedings. It seems not to have come up in the police investigation either as no witness statement shows that police ever asked anyone about the father-daughter bond either.

Thus, for a public desperate to know why police would accuse a woman of killing her own father, it was left to reporters to try to discern what their relationship was like. They asked everyone they could find who knew the family, and, with the notable exception of Hiram Harrington, each person they spoke to confirmed that Lizzie had always spoken well of her father and seemed in every way a devoted daughter, just as Emma was.

John Morse, an uncle who, unlike Harrington, had spent a great deal of time with the Borden family, once staying with them for over a year, told the Boston Herald on August 5th, “As regards my nieces, I know they had the tenderest and kindest feelings toward their parents.” When a reporter for the Boston Post asked Morse specifically if Lizzie and Andrew were on pleasant terms, he replied. “Oh yes, quite pleasant. Yes, of course.”

Speaking to the Fall River Evening News, Mrs. Susan Handy, a close friend of the family, said she had been a “frequent visitor at the Borden home during the last fifteen years and I never saw anybody more kind both to Mr. and Mrs. Borden than Lizzie and Emma.”

Mrs. Brigham especially made a point of it to The Post. “I could give you very many illustrations of … Lizzie’s kind consideration for her father and his for her, For instance, both of the girls would have much preferred to live in this part of town to where they did, and often expressed the wish of course, but said that it was better for their father … to live where they did, as it was near his business interests, and so they did not urge it.”

Meanwhile, Lizzie’s friends gathered at Marion said this to a reporter: “As for Lizzie and her father, they were, without being demonstrative, very fond of each other. I saw her at church and asked her to come [with us to Marion], but she said that she did not think she ought to. Her father and mother were going across the river where they had a farm as they had always done in the summer and Lizzie said her father, who would be in town every day and get his dinner at home, would be left alone if she went away. She felt as if she ought to stay at home, at least part of the time, to see that everything went all right. I told her that her father could get his dinner at a restaurant or at the hotel, but Lizzie said there were often little things about his business in the way of writing that she could help him on.”

At Lizzie’s trial, her attorneys called Mrs. Marianna Holmes, a close friend who had been in the Borden House with Lizzie each day after the murders to offer her support. After asking her a number of questions on other topics, they asked her about the morning of the funeral. Mrs. Holmes took Lizzie down into the sitting room to view her father’s body before anyone else arrived. Lizzie had apparently wanted a private moment with him, and Mrs. Holmes was the only other person in the room. Inside the open casket, Andrew’s face had been turned so only the unmarred side was visible. When asked if Lizzie had cried, Mrs. Holmes said yes. Knowlton objected to any more questioning along such lines, he didn’t want to jury to hear any more about Lizzie’s grief for her father, but the judge overruled him. Mrs. Holmes then went on to say that as Lizzie stood at the casket, weeping, she leaned over and kissed her father’s face.

Ultimately, even the district attorney had to admit that he himself saw no reason why she would kill Andrew. In his closing argument at trial, Knowlton said, “There may be that in this case which saves us from the idea that Lizzie Andrew Borden planned to kill her father. I hope she did not. I should be slow to believe she did.” He then went on to say that she did kill him but only because she had to, or else he would realize what she did to Abby. Lizzie’s attorneys did not address this weak claim directly, merely pointing out again that between Lizzie and Andrew “there is not shown the slightest bit of trouble or disagreement whatsoever.”

A Beloved Memory

Lizzie further revealed her devotion to her father long after his death. Her friend Helen Leighton relayed that she often spoke of her father in fond terms, sometimes quoting him and repeating phrases she claimed her father had used. From Parallel Lives, we know that many who worked for Lizzie also said that she frequently spoke well of her father, at least according to the memories they shared with their children. (For those who wonder if Lizzie said such things in a performative way, Lizzie made such references many decades after the murders to people who were already convinced by her character that she was innocent.)

We also know that Lizzie visited his grave so often that she was on friendly terms with the groundskeeper at Oak Grove cemetery, who would escort her to the grave and advise her to ignore anyone else there eyeing her suspiciously. Seeing firsthand her private devotion to her father’s memory, he said he could not believe her guilty of killing him. As she neared the end of her life, the authors of Parallel Lives noted that her visits to his graveside became more frequent.

Perhaps that is why, when she wrote her will, the very first individual bequest she made was $500 to the City of Fall River, to finance the perpetual care of her father’s grave. She also asked not only to be buried in the family plot but also specified that she wanted to be laid to rest at her father’s feet. And there the remains of Lizzie Borden—a daughter who throughout her tempest-tossed life displayed nothing but affection for her father—lie today.