Lizzie Index

On the opening day of Lizzie Borden’s 1893 trial for the murders of Andrew and Abby Borden, Julian Ralph, the esteemed reporter for The New York Sun, told his readers that Lizzie “is either the most injured of innocents or the blackest of monsters. She either hacked her father and stepmother to pieces with the furious brutality of the ogre in Poe’s story of the Rue Morgue or some other person did it and she suffers the double torture of losing her parents and being wrongfully accused of their murders.”

While the jury decided the question to their own satisfaction, decreeing Lizzie “not guilty,” the rest of the world remained unconvinced, and the question put forth by Julian Ralph remains hauntingly unanswered. Who was the real Lizzie Borden, and why did cultural critic Alexander Woollcott call her “the most interesting woman in the world?” Learn more about Lizzie herself, apart from the crime for which she was accused and the evidence gathered against her, in the entries below.