Qualla: Lizzie Borden

Lizzie Borden: Introduction

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. "Maggie, come quick! Father's dead. Somebody came in and killed him." Lizzie Borden's cry to the family maid on the morning of August 4, 1892, launched what would become the most sensational murder case of the Gilded Age. In the sweltering parlor of 230 Second Street in Fall River, Massachusetts, Andrew Borden lay slumped on the sofa, his face split by ten or eleven blows from a hatchet-like weapon, the wounds still bleeding. Upstairs in the guest room, his wife Abby had already been dead for roughly ninety minutes, struck eighteen times. The prime suspect was Andrew's own daughter -- a 32-year-old Sunday school teacher who would be tried, acquitted, and immortalized in a children's rhyme that got the blow count wrong.

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Image: Public domain

Lizzie Borden: A House Divided

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit O'Neil, New Bedford, Mass, Public domain. Andrew Jackson Borden had built himself into one of Fall River's wealthiest men. Starting in furniture and casket manufacturing, he expanded into property development, textile mills, and banking, amassing an estate worth $300,000 -- roughly ten million dollars today. Yet he was l...

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Image: O'Neil, New Bedford, Mass | Public domain

Lizzie Borden: Ninety Minutes of Murder

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit O'Neil, New Bedford, Mass, Public domain. The timeline of August 4, 1892, has been reconstructed minute by minute. After breakfast, Andrew left for his morning walk. Sometime between 9:00 and 10:30 a.m., Abby went upstairs to make the guest room bed. Her killer struck her from the front first, a hatchet blow above the ea...

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Image: O'Neil, New Bedford, Mass | Public domain

Lizzie Borden: The Trial of the Century

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit B.W. Clinedinst, CC BY 3.0. Lizzie's behavior baffled investigators. Her statements were contradictory -- first she heard a groan, then she heard nothing. She claimed Abby had gone to visit a sick friend, producing a note that was never found. Officers who interviewed her noted she was unnervingly calm. Yet...

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Image: B.W. Clinedinst | CC BY 3.0

Lizzie Borden: Aftermath in Fall River

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit O'Neil, New Bedford, Mass, Public domain. Acquittal brought no peace. Lizzie and Emma moved to a large modern house in the Hill neighborhood, the fashionable district their father had always avoided. Lizzie adopted the name Lizbeth A. Borden and attempted to live a society life. Fall River wanted nothing to do with her. ...

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Image: O'Neil, New Bedford, Mass | Public domain

Lizzie Borden: The Rhyme That Won't Die

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit O'Neil, New Bedford, Mass, Public domain. "Lizzie Borden took an axe / Gave her mother forty whacks / When she saw what she had done / Gave her father forty-one." The rhyme, attributed either to an anonymous newspaper writer or to the ever-convenient Mother Goose, got the facts spectacularly wrong -- Abby suffered 18 or ...

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Image: O'Neil, New Bedford, Mass | Public domain