Crime Library - Closing Knowlton

CLOSING ARGUMENT FOR THE PROSECUTION

Hosea Knowlton

from the Trial of Lizzie Andrew Borden

courtesy of Harry Widdows

May it please your Honors, Mr. Foreman and you, gentlemen of the jury: Upon one common ground in this case all humane men may stand together. However we may differ about many of the issues in the trial, there can be no doubt and I do not disguise my full appreciation of the fact that it is a most heart rending case. Whether we consider the tragedy that we are trying and the circumstances that surround it, the charge that followed it, the necessary course of the trial that has been had before you, the difficult and painful duty of the Counsel upon both sides of the case, or the duty that shall finally be committed to your charge, there is that in it all which lacerates the heartstrings of humanity.

It was an incredible crime, incredible, but for the cold and merciless facts which confront and defeat that incredulity. There is that in the tidings of a murder that thrills the human heart to its depths. When the word passes from lip to lip and from mouth to mouth that a human life has been taken by an assassin, the stoutest hearts stop beating, lips pale and cheeks blanch, strong men grow pale with the terror of the unknown and the mysterious; and if that be so with what I may, perhaps, by comparison call an ordinary assassination, what were the feelings that overpowered the community when the news of this tragedy was spread by the lightning to the ends of the world? Nay, gentlemen, I need not ask you to imagine it: You were a part of the community. It came to you in your daily avocations, it sent a thrill through your beings, and you felt that life was not secure.

Every man turned detective. Every act and fact and thought that occurred to the thousand, to the million men all over the United States, was spread abroad and furnished and given for the identification of the criminal, and still it remained an impenetrable mystery.

My distinguished friend says, Who could have done it? The answer would have been, Nobody could have done it. If you had read the account of these cold and heartless facts in any tale of fiction, before this thing had happened, would you not have said, Mr. Foreman---you would have said---that will do for a story, but such things never happen.

In the midst of the largest city of this County, in the midst of his household, surrounded by houses and people and teams and civilization, in the midst of the day, right in that household, while they were attending to their household duties in the midst of their family, an aged man and an aged woman are suddenly and brutally assassinated. It was a terrible crime. It was an impossible crime. But it was committed. And very much, very much, Mr. Foreman, of the difficulty of solving this awful tragedy starts from the very impossibility of the thing itself. Set any human being you can think of, put any degraded man or woman you ever heard of at the bar, and say to them, "You did this thing," and it would seem incredible. And yet it was done; it was done.

And I am bound to say, Mr. Foreman, and I say it out of a full heart, that it is scarcely more credible to believe the charge that followed the crime. I would not for one moment lose sight of the incredibility of that charge, nor ask you to believe it, unless you find it supported by facts that you cannot explain or deny.

The prisoner at the bar is a woman, and a Christian woman, as the expression is used. It is no ordinary criminal that we are trying today. It is one of the rank of lady, the equal of your wife and mine, of your friends and mine, of whom such things had never been suspected or dreamed before. I hope I may never forget, nor in anything that I say here today lose sight of the terrible significance of that fact. We are trying a crime that would have been deemed impossible but for the fact that it was, and are charging with the commission of it a woman whom we would have believed incapable of doing it but for the evidence that it is my duty, my painful duty, to call to your attention.

But I beg you to observe, Mr. Foreman and gentlemen, that you cannot dispose of the case upon that consideration. Alas, that it is so! But no station in life is a pledge or a security against the commission of crime, and we all know it. Those who are intrusted with the most precious savings of the widow and the orphan, who stand in the community as towers of strength and fidelity, suddenly fall, and their wreck involves the ruin of many happy homes. They were Christian men, they were devout men, they were members of some Christian church, they had every inducement around them to preserve the lives that they were supposed to be living, and yet when the crash came it was found that they were rotten to the core.

Nay, Mr. Foreman, those who are installed with the sacred robes of the church are not exempt from the lot of humanity. Time and again have we been grieved to learn, pained to find, that those who are set up to teach us the way of correct life have been found themselves to be foul as hell inside.

Is youth a protection against crime? It is a matter of the history of this Commonwealth that a boy of tender years was the most brutal, the most unrelenting, the most cruel, the most fiendish murderer that the Commonwealth ever knew.

Is sex a protection against crime? Is it not a matter of common knowledge that within the remembrance of every man I am talking to, a woman has been found who murdered a whole cart load of relatives for the sake of obtaining a miserable pittance of a fortune?

Ah, gentlemen, I do not underestimate, I do not speak lightly of the strength of a Christian character. Far be it from me to join in the sneers which are sometimes thoughtlessly indulged in, that a man who is a good Christian is not therefore a good man. Most of them are. Many times all of them are. But they are all sons of Adam and Eve. They fall because they are human. They fall all at once because they have never been shown to the light, and their fall is all the greater because their outward lives have been pure before. I do not forget what a bulwark it is to you and me, Mr. Foreman, that we have heretofore borne a reputation that is above the suspicion of crimes and felonies. It is sometimes the only refuge of a man put in straits. But nobody is beyond the rank of man. Else would it not have been said, even by the Disciples themselves, Lead not thy servant into presumptuous sins. It was not ordained by the Savior that the weak and the trembling and the wicked and the easily turned only should utter the prayer, Lead us not into temptation. We are none of us secure. Have you lead, (sic) sir, an honorable and an upright life? Thank your heavenly Father that the temptations have not been too strong for you. Have you, sir, never been guilty of heinous crimes? Is it your strength of character or is it your fortune that you have been able to resist what has been brought against you?

Mr. Foreman, let me not be misunderstood. Not for one moment would I urge that because a man or a woman has led an upright and devout life that therefore there should be any reason for suspecting him or her of crime. One the contrary, it is a buttress to the foundation, to the presumption of innocence, with which we start to try anybody.

I am obliged to tread now upon a more delicate ground. The prisoner is a woman, one of that sex that all high minded men revere, that all generous men love, that all wise men acknowledge their indebtedness to. It is hard, it is hard, Mr. Foreman and gentlemen, to conceive that woman can be guilty of crime. It is not a pleasant thing to reflect upon. But I am obliged to say, what strikes the justice of every man to whom I am talking, that while we revere the sex, while we show our courtesies to them, they are human like unto us. They are no better than we; they are no worse than we. If they lack in strength and coarseness and vigor, they make up for it in cunning, in dispatch, in celerity, in ferocity. If their loves are stronger and more enduring than those of men, am I saying too much that, on the other hand, their hates are more undying, more unyielding, more persistent.

Is that an unjust criticism? I do the sex no injustice. I read in my library of history and fiction that many of the most famous criminals have been women. I am told by the great master of human nature, the poet who was almost superhumanly wise, that when the courage of a man failed, it was the determination, the vigor, the relentless fury of a woman, that struck the king down, that her husband might succeed to the throne. I read in that other master of human nature, the great novelist of England, that the most dastardly, the most desperate, the most absolutely brutal crime that he details in his works of fiction, was the murder of Tulkinghorn by the woman who hated him.

We must face this case as men, not as gallants. You will be slow to believe it is within the capacity of a man to have done it. But it was done. You will be slower to believe that it was in the capacity of a woman to have done it, and I should not count you men if you did not, but it was done. It was done for a purpose. It was done by hatred. It was done, and who did it?

My learned associate asked you, and I adjure you, that in the trial of this cause no unworthy considerations shall find a place. Undoubtedly this matter has been in your thoughts. Undoubtedly you may have formed impressions. Undoubtedly you have talked this matter over. But in this sacred presence there is not room for a vestige of prejudice. You have been educated to believe, you are proud to recognize your loyalty, your fealty to the sex. Gentlemen, that consideration has no place under the oath you have taken. We are to find the facts.

I am said to be impervious to criticism, but those who have said one thing of me may have the consolation of knowing that the shaft has struck home. When it has been said of me that in the trial of this cause, in the prosecution of this case, there entered into it anything but the spirit of duty, anything like a spirit of revenge, any unworthy motives like ambition or personal glory, if they had known how I shrank from this horrible duty, those slanderous tongues would never have uttered those words. Gentlemen, it is the saddest duty of my life---it is the saddest duty of my life. Gladly would I have shrunk from it if I could have done so and been a man. Gladly would I have yielded the office with which I have been entrusted by the votes of this district if I could have done so honorably. And if now any word I say, any evidence I state, any inference I draw, shall be done with any purpose or intent to do that woman an injustice, may my right hand wither and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth. With that spirit, gentlemen, let me ask you to enter upon this case.

With all sympathy for the woman, in which, believe me, I share with you; with all distrust of any evidence until it is brought home to your convictions, in which you will let me share with you, and all good and true men; with due regard, if you please, to the consequences of your action, yet let me remind you that you stand not only to deliver that woman but to deliver the community. It was a crime which may well challenge your most sober and sacred attention. That aged man, that aged woman, had gone by the noonday of their lives. They had borne the burden and heat of the day. They had accumulated a competency which they felt would carry them through the waning years of their lives, and hand in hand they expected to go down to the sunset of their days in quiet and happiness. But for that crime they would be enjoying the air of this day. But for that assassin many years of their life, like yours, I hope, sir, would have been before them, when the cares of life were past, when the anxieties of their daily avocations had ceased to trouble them, and together they would have gone down the hill of life, serene in an old age which was happy because the happiness had been earned by a life of fidelity and toil.

Over those bodies we stand, Mr. Foreman. We sometimes forget the past. Over those bodies we stand, and we say to ourselves, is it possible that this crime cannot be discovered? You are standing, as has been suggested, in the presence of death itself. It is not only what comes hereafter, but it is the double death that comes before. There is a place, it is the chamber of death, where all these personal animosities, passions and prejudices have no room, where all matters of sentiment are one side, where nothing but the truth, the naked truth, finds room and lodgment. In that spirit I adjure you to enter upon the trial of this case. It is the most solemn duty of your lives.

Before passing to a consideration of the evidence in the case, which I shall endeavor to state exactly as it is, and to comment upon in a way which I hope will address itself to your understandings and your convictions, let me say a word as to the nature of the evidence. We have brought before you, as fully and as frankly as we could, every witness whom we thought had any knowledge of any surrounding of this transaction. I do not know of one that has been kept back. They were not merely the officers of the police. They were the domestic of that establishment, the tried and faithful servant, and for aught that I know or have heard, the friend of these girls today. They were the physician, who was the first one called on the discovery of the tragedy. They are the faithful friends and companions of this defendant. And we have called them all before you and listened to what they had to say, whether it was for her or against her. Nay, we called the relative himself, and had his story of what he knew in the matter, and all the people who by any possibility could have known anything about this thing we have tried to produce to you, to tell all that they could tell.

Then there came another class of witnesses, if I may classify them. As soon as this crime was discovered, it became, Mr. Foreman, did it not, the duty of those who are entrusted with the detection of crime to take such measures as they thought were proper for the discovery of the criminal. They are the officers of the police. When you go home, sir, to your family, after this long agony is over, and a crime has been committed that approaches this in magnitude, or any crime whatever, where will you go? to whom will you appeal? on whom will you rely? Upon the very men that my distinguished friend has seen fit by indirection to criticize as interested in this case. He put a question the other day which I forgave him for because it came in heat, but it illustrates what I am saying,---saying to one of these officers "speaking to you not as a police officer but as a man." It is true they are police officers, but they are men too. They are to find out what the truth of it is. They made many mistakes. The crime was beyond the experience of any man in this country or in this world; what wonder that they did? They left many things undone that they might have done; what wonder that they did? It was beyond the scope of any man to grasp in its entirety at that time. But honestly, faithfully, as thoroughly as God had given them ability, they pursued the various avenues by which they thought they might find this criminal. My distinguished friend has not charged in words, and it is not true, that their energies have been bent to this unfortunate prisoner. It was in evidence that many things were followed up, that many trails were pursued, and I am not permitted even to tell you how many men were followed with the thought that perhaps they had something to do with this crime, how many towns and cities were investigated, and how many people were watched and followed, how many trails have been pursued. Don't you suppose, Mr. Foreman, they would be glad today if it could be found that this woman did not do this thing? Is there a man so base in all this world that hopes she did it, that wants to believe she did it, that tries to believe she did it? Nay, nay, Mr. Foreman: all the evidence in this case that is entitled to great weight from the police officers came before (as I shall show you bye-and-bye) any suspicion came to them that she was connected with it. And it was only after they had investigated the facts, had gotten her stories and put them together that the conviction forced itself upon them, as perhaps it may upon you, that there is no other explanation which will answer the facts that cannot be denied.

A blue coat does not make a man any better; it ought not to make him any worse. They are men: Mr. Fleet is a man, Mr. Mullaly is a man, Mr. Medley is a man: and they are not to be stood up in a row and characterized as good or bad because they are officers, but upon what you think of them as men. There is no presumption that any class of people do not tell the truth. There is not even a presumption that thieves do not tell the truth. There is no presumption one way or the other about policemen. They are to be judged as other men are. And because they have been called into this case and because they have found things which they present to you, I say it is wicked to brand them as over zealous or unkind or prejudiced or biased. Judge each man as he appears before you, and judge him righteously.

Another class of evidence still is that which is sometimes looked upon with some suspicion, particularly when they disagree, and that is the testimony of those who are called upon to give their opinions,---sometimes called experts. Fortunately, however, in this case, Mr. Foreman and gentlemen, the matters they testify to (and I am going to dismiss all further consideration of them with this remark) are matters which there has been no attempt to deny whatever. Nay, more than that; it is customary in the trial of a cause for murder to afford to those who represent the defence an opportunity on their side to select such men of reputation and eminence as they see fit, who are accorded the privilege of examining the facts and the evidence and the exhibits, and the various things that are put in the case, and see if they have any different conclusion to draw. These things were put into the hands of Dr. Draper, and no less eminent men than Doctors Dwight and Richardson, whom some of you know to be the equals of those who have been called here, have examined them to their hearts' content, and it is not for my distinguished friend to challenge the conclusion to which these gentlemen came, when their own experts are silent in reply. You will believe what they said because those interested to find flaws in them have not told you of a flaw. You will find that their conclusions are accurate because those who could have disputed them have not done so. And while ordinarily, when one expert says one thing and another another, little weight can be attached to their opinions when everybody agrees upon both sides, either by their silence or by their testimony that part of the case is left beyond any question whatever.

There is another thing that troubles my friends---I now include the learned advocate who opened this case as well as the distinguished counsel who closed it ---and which perhaps from your ordinary and accustomed channel of thought may have troubled you. I speak of it frankly, for many honest men have been heard to say---I have heard many an honest man say that he could not believe circumstantial evidence. And I respect the honesty of the man who says it. But, gentlemen, the crime we are trying is a crime of an assassin. It is the work of one who does his foul deeds beyond the sight and hearing of man. All it means is this: that when one sees the crime committed or one hears the crime committed, then the testimony of him that sees or hears is the testimony of a witness who saw it or heard it, and is direct evidence. All other evidence is circumstantial evidence. That is the exact distinction. Direct evidence is the evidence of a man who sees and hears: circumstantial evidence is all other kinds of evidence. Supposing you should say, Mr. Foreman, "I will not believe any array of circumstantial evidence whatever," what follows? Did you ever hear of a murderer getting a witness to his work who could see it or hear it? Crimes are committed every day of this character, not only murder but other felonies of like character, arson, burglary: and they are committed by stealth: they are committed in secret: the traces of them are hidden. Murder is the work of stealth and craft, in which there are not only no witnesses, but the traces are attempted to be obliterated. And yet murder must be punished. What is called sometimes circumstantial evidence is nothing in the world but that presentation of circumstances---it may be one or fifty---there isn't any chain about it---the word "chain" is a misnomer as applied to it; it is the presentation of circumstances from which one is irresistibly driven to the conclusion that crime has been committed. Talk about a chain of circumstances! When that solitary man had lived on his island for twenty years and believed that he was the only human being there, and that the cannibals and savages that lived around him had not found him, nor had not come to his island, he walked out one day on the beach, and there he saw the fresh print in the sand of a naked foot. He had no lawyer to tell him that that was nothing but a circumstance. He had no distinguished counsel to urge upon his fears that there was no chain about that thing which led him to a conclusion. His heart beat fast: his knees shook beneath him, he fell to the ground in fright, because Robinson Crusoe knew when he saw that circumstance that man had been there that was not himself. It was circumstantial evidence: it was nothing but circumstantial evidence, but it satisfied him. It is not a question of circumstantial evidence, Mr. Foreman: it is a question of the sufficiency of circumstantial evidence. Let me anticipate a little. Nobody that has told of it has seen Lizzie Andrew Borden burn that Bedford cord dress. There is not a witness to it. And yet my distinguished friend never said to you, "the evidence of that is circumstantial and you cannot believe it." Oh no. We heard what she said before the act was supposed to have been done: we heard what she said after the act was supposed to have been done: we saw the position she was in: we saw the act she was doing that preceded it, and we put those circumstances together and we say, as we have a right to say, as it never occurred to one of you not to have said until I suggested the fact,---that circumstances have proved that that dress is burned, so that counsel themselves do not dispute the proposition. It is like the refuse that floats upon the surface of the stream. You stand upon the banks of the river and you see a chip go by. That is only a circumstance. You see another chip go by. That is another circumstance. You see a chip in front of you going the other way. That is only another circumstance. Bye and bye you see a hundred in the great body of the stream, all moving one way, and a dozen or two in this little eddy in front of you going the other way. The chain is not complete: some of the chips go upstream: but you would not have any doubt, you would not hesitate for a moment, Mr. Foreman, to say that you knew which way the current of that river was, and yet, you have not put your hand in the water and you have only seen things from which you inferred it, and even the things themselves did not all go the same way. But you had the wit and the sense and the human and common experience to observe that those that went the other way could be explained, and the great body of them went that way.

I speak of this perhaps with more earnestness and at more length than I need to, Mr. Foreman, because I know how prone the mind is, judging from what is loosely said sometimes by the press and by unthinking people, "Oh, it is nothing but a case of circumstantial evidence." Mr. Foreman, there have been very few cases of assassination in which there was direct testimony. My learned friend the counsel who opened this case has culled out from the billions of cases that have been tried to juries in English speaking countries,---I think I do not exaggerate---from the thousand million of cases which have been tried upon circumstantial evidence in English speaking countries, an instance here and an instance there where it was found, perhaps, that there was a mistake: and those cases, with one single exception (and in that case the man never got hanged) are open to great doubt and discredit. But every lawyer knows, every man who is accustomed to the trying of cases is familiar with the fact that the testimony of men is wrong a hundred times where facts are wrong once. Men will not tell the truth always: facts cannot tell but one story. Witnesses are under oath, but will perjure themselves: circumstances are not under oath, but they cannot do but what they have to do. If this case is not to be considered because it is a case of circumstantial evidence, Mr. Foreman, there is no case that can be considered, and murder goes unpunished.

What impresses one as the remarkable and distinguishing feature of this case is the gradual discovery of the surprising fact that these two people did not come to their death at the same time. I have no doubt that each one of you, as you heard the stories as they came flashed over the wires, had the idea that was common to everybody who did not know anything about it,---and there was nobody that did,---that some man had come in, rushed through the house, killed the old gentleman, rushed upstairs and killed the old lady, and then had made his escape. But it has been found that that was not so. It has been proved so conclusively that counsel do not dispute the proposition. It is scarcely worth while for me to recapitulate the evidence. I will not do it. Mr. Wixon, Mr. Pettee, to say nothing of the officers and Dr. Dolan, and Dr. Dedrick, who is not in any way connected with the government and hold no government office,---came in there and made their examination, and as Dr. Dedrick put it, it appeared to him,---for he is a physician or experience---that the deaths were several hours apart. Dr. Dolan examined more carefully the blood and the wounds and the head, and he thought there was a difference of from an hour to an hour and a half. But,gentlemen, there is within us, provided by the Almighty, a clock by which the eye of science can tell the time. When a man fall overboard into the water and drowns, his watch stops, and fixes the time when he drowns: anybody can tell that. But when the human life stops, if precautionary measures are taken, as were taken in this case, a man who is skilled in the examination of these things can tell as accurately the relative time of the death of that man as we can tell the time by that clock up there. And so we proved---ah, it was a suspicion born of consciousness, and not of anything we said in this case, when it was suggested that we were trying to show the poverty of the mode of life here: there never has been a word of that on our side of the case: my learned associate did not even hint that we were going to claim there was anything mean or poverty-stricken in this family, and it never was said until my distinguished friend saw fit to defend that family from what never was charged. But for the purpose of scientific investigation, which was necessary, we proved---and for no other purpose whatever---what was the breakfast of that family that morning, and that the members of it sat down and partook together. It was a good breakfast: it was the ordinary New England breakfast, and nobody has said the contrary. Do not let me be misunderstood for one single moment in this case. And for that purpose we showed you that these people sat down to breakfast at from seven to quarter-past seven, and finished from half-past seven to quarter of eight, and ate together and ate at the same time. They lived their lives out, prematurely cut off by the hand of the assassin: their bodies lay upon the floor. Their stomachs were taken out, digestion stopped when they stopped, and were sent to that eminent, that scientific, that honest, that utterly fair man, Professor Wood, whom my learned friends will join with me in saying is the most honest expert there is in Massachusetts today. He alone was able to determine accurately the time of their death, assuming that digestion went on normally within them, and he says that in all human probability the time of her death preceded his by an hour and a half: it might possibly have been a half hour less, it might possibly have been a half hour more: that there was no evidence of abnormal digestion: that there was no evidence of irritants that would hasten it or retard it in either case: that digestion had begun in the ordinary and regular way and was going on when their lives were taken from them. And it appears from his testimony---and Dr. Cheever corroborated it, for he says the minimum would be an hour and the maximum two hours, but he is not so good a judge as Wood himself---it appears by all the probabilities in the case that that woman came to her death by the period of an hour and a half before the man. Singularly enough, science is corroborated by the facts. Singularly enough, everything fits into that proposition. As I shall attempt to show you hereafter, Andrew Jackson Borden probably never heard the clock strike eleven as it pealed forth from the tower of city hall: and she was found dead with the implement with which she had been engaged in dusting the rooms at her head and close by her in death. She was stricken down while she was in that morning work in which she was engaged the last time that anybody saw her. And all the evidence in the case points to the irresistible conviction that when Andrew Borden was down at his accustomed place in the bank of Mr. Abraham Hart, the faithful wife he had left at home was prone in death in the chamber of the house he had left her in. At half past nine, if we are to believe the consensus of all this testimony, the assassin met her in that room and put an end to her innocent old life. Gentlemen, that is a tremendous fact. It is a controlling fact in this case. It is the key of the case. Why do I say that? Because the murderer of this man was the murderer of Mrs. Borden. It was the malice against Mrs. Borden that inspired the assassin. It was Mrs. Borden whose life that wicked person sought; and all the motive that we have to consider, all we have to say about this case bears on her. It is a tremendous fact for another thing, a significant fact for another thing. We are now driven to the alternative of finding that there was a human being who had the unparalleled audacity to penetrate that house when the entire family were in and about it so far as he knew, to pursue his murders with a deadly weapon in his hand to the furthest corner of the house and there to select an innocent, an un-offending old lady for his first victim and then lie in wait until the family should all get together an hour and a half later that he might kill the other one. This murderer was no fool; he was the embodiment of craft and cunning. He could not foresee that Bridget would go up stairs; he could not foresee that Lizzie would go to the barn. He might have known from the habits of Andrew Borden that he would come back, but it would be back to a house full of people,---Morse might come at any time, he knew not when, Emma might come. He was waiting, waiting for the family to assemble, this man who committed this deed. It was no sudden act of a man coming in and out. It was the act of a person who spent the forenoon in this domestic establishment, killing the woman at her early work and waiting till the man returned for his noon day meal in order that he could be killed when everybody would be likely to be around him. It is a tremendous fact, Mr. Foreman. It appears in this case from beginning to end. I shall have to ask you now to go back with me to that morning in the guest chamber and stand over the body of that poor woman as she lay there mangled and bleeding, and ask who could have done it? She had not any enemy in the world. You and I sometimes have our jars, our discords. Andrew J. Borden had had his little petty quarrels with his tenants, nothing out of the ordinary, but Mrs. Abby Durfee Borden had not an enemy in all the world. There she lay bleeding, dead, prone by the hand of an assassin. Somebody went up there to kill her. In all this universe there could not be found a person who could have had any motive to do it. But let us see. Let us see. We must now go into this establishment and see what manner of family this was. It is said that there is a skeleton of the household of every man, but the Borden skeleton---if there was one---was fairly well locked up from view. They were a close mouthed family. They did not parade their difficulties. Last of all would you expect they would tell the domestic in the kitchen, which is the whole tower of strength of the defence---and yet Mr. Foreman there was a skeleton in the closet of that house which was not adequate to this thing,---oh, no, not adequate to this thing. There in not anything in human nature that is adequate to this thing---remember that. But there was a skeleton of which we have seen the grinning eye balls and the dangling limbs. It is useless to tell you that there was peace and harmony in that family. We know better. We know better. The remark that was made to Mrs. Gifford, the dressmaker, was not a petulant outburst such as might come and go. That correction of Mr. Fleet at the very moment the poor woman who had reared that girl lay dead within ten feet of her voice was not merely accidental. It went down deep into the springs of human nature. Lizzie Borden had never known her mother. She was not three years old when the woman passed away, and her youthful lips had scarcely learned to pronounce the tender word Mamma, and no picture of her lay in the girls mind. It was not so perhaps, with Emma, but Lizzie Borden had no remembrance of her mother such as your child or mine would have, if ever three years of age and their mothers were suddenly taken away. And yet she had a mother,---she had a mother. Before she was old enough to go to school, before she had arrived at the age of five years this woman, the choice of her father, the companion of her father who had lost and mourned and loved again, had come in and had done her duty by that girl and had reared her, had stood in all the attitudes which characterize the tenderest of all human relations. Through all her childhood's sicknesses that woman had cared for her. When she came in weary from her sports, feeble and tired it was on her breast that that girl had sunk as have our children on the breast of their mothers. She had been her mother, faithful and persevering, and had brought her up to be at least an honorable and worthy woman in appearance and manner. This girl owed everything to her. It was not a case where after a period of childhood from ten, twelve, or fifteen years, the loved one is taken away and another one comes in to take its place who tries as we know often how faithfully they try, but cannot do it, to fill the place of the one that has gone. Mrs. Borden was the only mother she had ever known, and she had given to this girl her mother's love and had given her this love when a child when it was not her own and she had not gone through the pains of child birth, because it was her husband's daughter. And then a quarrel,--what a quarrel! What a quarrel, Mr. Foreman! A man worth more than a quarter of a million of dollars, wants to give his wife, his faithful wife who has served him thirty years for her board and clothes, who has done his work, who has kept his house, who has reared his children,---wants to buy and get with her the interest in a little homestead where her sister lives. How wicked to have found fault with it. How petty to have found fault with it. Nay, if it was a man sitting in that dock instead of a woman, I would characterize it in more opprobrious terms than those. I trust that in none of the discussion that I engage in today shall I forget the courtesy due from a man to a woman; and although it is my horrible and painful duty to point to the fact of this woman being a murderess, I trust I shall not forget that she is a woman, and I hope I never have.

And she repudiated the title that that woman should have had from her. Did you ever hear of such a case as that? I have once. I once knew of some young man who had acquired that contempt for a dissolute and drunken father that they denied him the title of his paternity. I know how utterly vile and worthless his life was. I shared in their contempt for them. But it struck me as the most unnatural thing I ever knew a young man to do.

My distinguished friend says this defendant had grown to be a woman, that is true, but that mother of hers had grown to be an aged woman, and she was as much a mother to her then as she ever was. The assassin's blade cuts deep. That wicked hatchet when deep down into the brain of that old woman, but Mr. Foreman it never went so deep into Abby Durfee Borden as did the contemptuous refusal of this girl to call her by the name of mother. It was a living insult to that woman, a living expression of contempt, and that woman repeated it day in and day out, saying to her, as Emma had said, you are not interested in us. You have worked round our father and have got a little miserable pittance of $1500 out of him, and you shall be my mother no more. Am I exaggerating this thing? She kept her own counsel. Bridget did not know anything about it. She was in the kitchen. This woman never betrayed her feelings except when some one else tried to make her call her mother and then her temper broke forth. Living or dead, no person should use that word mother to that poor woman unchallenged by Lizzie Borden. She had left it off herself; all through her childhood days, all through the times when growing to womanhood, all through her young life Mrs. Borden had been a mother to her as is the mother of every other child to its offspring, and the time comes when they still live in the same house and this child will no longer call her by that name.

Mr. Foreman, it means much. It means much. Why does it mean much? I stop speaking to a man who goes by my office or house. You stop intercourse with a man you are accustomed to meet. You refuse to address him or you call him by some unworthy epitaph. He goes his way and you go yours. But these people day in and day out, year in and year out under the same roof, compelled to eat the same bread, compelled to sleep in the same house, compelled to meet each other morning, noon and night yet maintain this strained, unnatural hostility. I don't know but what some of you to whom I am talking, Mr. Foreman and gentlemen, are connected with families in which there are second wives and two sets of children. I am not in my own, but there are such in my immediate surroundings, so that I can speak frankly and fairly about it. I agree because I know it is so, and you probably do,---I agree that in very, very many cases it can and does happen that when the mother or father dies leaving children and the relict marries again, that by the forbearance, by the Christianity, by the mutual love that they bear to each other the family relations go on unimpaired. But alas, I know, alas you know too, that when once the seeds of discord are sown by the relation of step-father, step-daughter or step-mother there are no more bitter hatreds in this world. Are there? When once these seeds come in, such must be the result because they are nurtured and fostered every day and every month. The back of the jaded horse becomes galled. If he can be freed from his work it will heal and become well, but if he is kept with a saddle on the galled part and worked and worked and worked and has no chance to get away from it, it will fester and finally infect his whole system. And so we find it here. They did not eat together. Bridget says so. My distinguished friend tried to get her to take it back and she did partly. The woman would have taken most anything back under that cross-examination, but this is her testimony: "That is so, they always ate together? A. Yes, they always ate in the same dining room." Bridget is going to have her own way yet. But I do not put it on Bridget. I put it on Lizzie herself. When Mrs. Gifford spoke to her, talking about her mother, she said, "don't say mother to me,---" that mother who had reared her and was her father's companion, under the roof with whom she was then living, whose household she shared, to whom every debt of gratitude was due and whom she had repudiated as her mother, she could not find the heart to say to this dressmaker was her mother, for I believe that you believe this story is true,---"she is a mean, good-for-nothing old thing." Nay, that is not all: "we do not have much to do with her. I stay in my room most of the time." Is not that so? Uncle John Morse came to visit them. Stayed over night and during the afternoon and evening and next morning and never saw Lizzie at all,---her own uncle. "Why you come down to your meals?" said Mrs. Gifford, and Lizzie said, "yes, but we don't eat with them if we can help it." I heard what Miss Emma said Friday and I could but admire the loyalty and fidelity of that unfortunate girl to her still more unfortunate sister. I could not find it in my heart to ask her many questions. She was in the most desperate strait that an innocent woman could be in, her next of kin, her only sister stood in peril and she must come to the rescue. She faintly tells us the relations in the family were peaceful, but we sadly know they were not. But you will say, you will fairly say, Mr. Foreman,---let me not under rate this thing one atom,---you will fairly say what is that? I don't know. I don't know how deep this cancer had eaten in. It makes but little show on the surface. A woman can preserve her appearance of health and strength even when the roots of this foul disease have gone and wound clear around her heart and vital organs. This was a cancer. It was an interruption of what should have been the natural agreeable relations between mother and daughter, a quarrel about property, not her property but her fathers, and property that he alone had the right to dispose of. A man does not surrender his rights to his own until he is dead, and not even then if he chooses to make a will. She could not brook that that woman should have influence enough over her father to let him procure the little remnant of her own property that had fallen to her from her own folks. She had repudiated the title of mother. She had lived with her in hatred. She had gone on increasing in that hatred until we do not know, we can only guess how far that sore had festered, how far the blood in that family had been poisoned by the misfortune of these unfortunate relations between them.

I come back to that poor woman lying prone, as has been described, in the parlor. It is wicked to have to say it, it is wicked to have to say it, but gentlemen there is no escape from the truth. Had she an enemy in all the world? She had one. Was anybody in the world to be benefited by her taking away? There was one. There was one.

It is hard to believe that mere property would have influenced this belief. We are not obliged to, although it appears that property was that which made or broke the relations of that family, and a small amount of property too. But there was one woman in the world who believed that that dead woman had stood between her and her father, and was the enemy of her and the friend of her father, and between whom there had grown up that feeling that prevented her from giving her the title that the ordinary instincts of decency would have entitled her to.

Let us examine the wounds upon that woman. You will see the skull by and by. In the effort which counsel have made, and I which I hope you will not be ungrateful to us for, to try this case, this horrid case, as decently as we could, we have refrained from bringing in to you, excepting upon a single occasion when it was necessary for the purposes of experiment, the mutilated remains of those people. I am glad, too, that my distinguished friend has had the manliness, as I knew he would, not to criticize that otherwise awful act of producing those bones. It is a horrid thing to do. But, gentlemen, murder is a horrid thing, and all that goes with it---all that goes with it. It is necessary for the purpose of evidence, and, as I shall show you by and by, it might be equally necessary for the protection of this woman, if affairs had taken another turn, for it might have just as well be her shield as our weapon---what was found within those skulls. It is done in every important murder case; nay, it was done in the very last case that was tried in this room for a capital crime. And while we deplore the violation of the tomb, murder knows nothing of decency.

So we look at that skull and we look at those wounds, and what do we read there? We know afterwards, by another examination down stairs, that no thief did this thing, there was no object of plunder. We are spared the suspicion that any base animal purpose had to do with this crime. It has not been suggested, owing to the frankness and courtesy of our friends, and we are not obliged to talk about that.

No, Mr. Foreman, there was nothing in those blows but hatred, but hatred, and a desire to kill. What sort of blows were they? Some struck here at an angle, badly aimed; some struck here in the neck, badly directed; some pattered on the top of the head and didn't go through; some, where the skull was weaker, went through. A great strong man would have taken a blow of that hatchet and made an end of it. The hand that held that weapon was not the hand of masculine strength. It was the hand of a person strong only in hate and desire to kill. We have not proved anything yet, but we must take things as they come, no matter where they lead us. It was not the work of a man who, with a blow of that hatchet, could have smashed any part of that skull, and whose unerring aim would have made no false blows or false work. It was the blows of hatred; the weak, puttering, indecisive, badly aimed, nerveless blows---I forebear for the present to bring that sentence to a conclusion, for I won't do it until I am obliged to, I won't ask you until I am obliged to, to listen to it. I will come at this one step at a time.

Now we must go back and see what the circumstances of that crime were, for that is the crime we are trying. We will come at the other one by and by, and see how and when and why that happened. But now we are trying that crime, the motives of that crime, the possible author of that crime, who could have committed that crime, what sort of person committed that crime; and why was it done.

We find, Mr. Foreman, perhaps the most remarkable house that you ever heard of. My distinguished friend has admitted so many things that I am saved the necessity of arguing very much about the circumstances surrounding that house. Everything was locked up. Why, did you notice there was even the barbed wire at the bottom of the fence as well as on the top and on the stringers? Everything was shut up. It was the most zealously guarded house I ever heard of. The cellar door was found locked by all the witnesses that examined it. The barn door was locked at night, and was kept locked all night and opened in the morning, by the undisputed testimony of Bridget, whom nobody has suggested or ventured to suggest has told anything more than she knows in this case.

The closet door, up at the head of the stairs, was found locked by Mr. Fleet, and every time that he wanted to go in there, or anybody else wanted to go in there, or Lizzie herself, she furnished the keys that unlocked it. So that door was locked up.

The front door was a door which had been kept by a spring lock until that day. The day before, when Dr. Bowen called, Bridget let him in by the spring lock. That night, when Lizzie came home from her call on Miss Russell, she let herself in by the spring lock. There isn't an atom of evidence that up to the time of this tragedy, and when people began to come in and out, and upset the ordinary arrangements of that house, but that front door had always been kept by a spring lock, opened in the morning. That morning it was not opened. It was that woman's business to open it, and she did not open it. She came downstairs and went into the kitchen and went about her ordinary avocations, and by and by, when Mr. Borden came home, he expected to find it unlocked, because he tried his key to it, and it wouldn't fit, and he had to call her attention to get in.

And it was locked not only with the spring lock but with the bolt and with the lower lock, all three put together, as people lock their door when they go to bed. Not the shutting in of an assassin, as my distinguished friend has suggested, who was trying to lock himself into the house, wild and improbable as that suggestion is. But it was the lock of those who retire at night, when they turn all the keys, and it was not unlocked the next morning.

Then the screen door. I hesitate to weary you with details. My distinguished friend in his cross-examination found one time, that was when Bridget came in from the little trip she made to the yard when she was sick, and she once said she did lock the screen door up then, and a little afterwards, when my brother cross-examined her, she wasn't quite sure, but she was almost sure she did. But the next time anybody went through the screen door was when she went out to wash the windows, and she found it locked, and unlocked it.

Now let us go through the movements of that family. It may be, perhaps, as good a way to do as any to refresh your memories about it as well as my own. I will go back to night before, because I want to keep this house locked as zealously as I can. We go back to the night before. That afternoon at five o'clock that screen door was locked. That night when Bridget went out she locked the back door after her. That night when she came back she found it locked, and she locked up the screen door and the outside door and went upstairs to bed. No chance for anybody to get in that day. The cellar was never unlocked except on the Tuesday before---and I get this right from the testimony, because I do not want to argue anything but what is strictly correct.

The next morning Bridget got up at 6.15 and took in the milk and hooked the screen door, unlocking the big door. A little while afterwards Mrs. Borden came down, some time between half past and quarter of seven, and went into the sitting room. Mr. Borden came a little while afterwards, put his key on the shelf, and unhooked the screen door and went into the yard, Bridget remaining in the kitchen all the time. When he came back Bridget was out of view of the screen door and don't know whether he locked it or not. But the next person that went out was Morse, and Mr. Morse tells us---for he fills all that cavity up---Mr. Morse tells us that he unhooked the screen door when he went out and Mr. Borden hooked it after him, so that Mr. Borden must have hooked it when he came in. Then when Mr. Borden came in he hooked the screen door again, Bridget being on guard in the kitchen all the time. She didn't see Mr. Morse come down, but he did come down and went into the sitting room, as he said himself. Then they sat down to breakfast about quarter past seven. Then they went into the sitting room and she went about her work outside; and the next thing she knew, as she thinks, or, as Mr. Morse thinks, somewhere about quarter of nine---that is the way he fixes it himself---Mr. Borden came to the door and let Mr. Morse out. That was the next person that had used the screen door after Mr. Borden had come in; and Mr. Morse says and testifies, as you heard him, on the first day of this trial, that he unhooked the screen door and went out and that Mr. Borden bade him good by, and I believe told him to come to dinner---I have forgotten whether that is in the case or not---and hooked the screen door after him. Then Bridget went about her work, eating her breakfast, cleaning off the dining room dishes, right there on guard in the kitchen all the time.

By and by Lizzie came down. Lizzie came into the kitchen, and her father had not then gone, and Bridget went out in the yard a few moments, because she was sick too. She remained right there in the yard for a moment or two, and when she came in Lizzie had got through her breakfast and had gone back into the other part of the house, she didn't know where, and Mr. Borden had gone off down town. When she came in she hooked the screen door. She didn't remember whether she did or not, but as she says afterwards that she found it hooked when she went out, and she was the next person who went out, she must have hooked it when she came in.

Now we are getting around to the vicinity of this occurrence, because Mr. Borden, as my distinguished friend has said, must have gone down town in the neighborhood of half past nine; for the first that is seen of him that is introduced here in evidence is his visit---possibly he went to the Post Office, which is almost on the way, and possibly he went around to inspect his tenement, which is almost on the way---but the first that is seen of him he appears at the bank where he was accustomed to be at half past nine in the morning.

Up to that time, Mr. Foreman, no human being could have got into that house. We go further than that. By and by Bridget goes into the dining room to clear off her dining room things and sees Mrs. Borden dusting in and out of the sitting room and the dining room, and Mrs. Borden directs her, when she gets through her work, to wash the windows. Bridget goes on about her work and Mrs. Borden disappears upstairs, and Lizzie is out of sight. She gets through with her work---and I call particular attention to this. She gets through with her work, Bridget does, goes down cellar and gets her pail, comes back up into the house, goes through the house and puts down the windows, and there isn't anybody below the stairs. Mr. Borden has long since gone down town. It must have been about half past nine when Bridget went out to wash the windows, or possibly a little later. She goes out of that screen door, which, up to that time, no human being could have gone into. She has no more than got out of doors than Lizzie, who had not been down stairs up to that time, who had not gone away from the house, and as she herself says, saw her mother up there making the bed, or working in that guest chamber---Lizzie comes to the back door to see if Bridget is fairly out of doors, goes back into the house, and the murder is then done, as Prof. Wood's clock tells us.

Never mind the impossibility---I won't argue that now, Mr. Foreman---never mind the impossibility for the present of imagining a person who was so familiar with the habits of that family, who was so familiar with the interior of that house, who could foresee the things that the family themselves could not see, who was so lost to all human reason, who was so utterly criminal as to act without any motive whatever, as to have gone to that house that morning, to have penetrated through the cordon of Bridget and Lizzie, and pursued that poor woman up the stairs to her death, and then waited, weapon in hand, until the house should be filled up with people again that he might complete his work. I won't discuss with you the impossibility of that thing for the present. I will come back to facts in this case and ask you whether or not, at that time when the murder was done---up to that time there had been no room for the assassin to come in, and after that time the house was there alone with Lizzie and her murdered victim.

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