Crime Library - Closing Robinson, Part 3

          One other thought, as you remember, that Lubinsky saw Manning as he was going down, and I think Gardner and Newhall also: and you know when Manning got there to the house all about it, so that you see it is confirmed again in another way. Then they have opportunity to find out by Mr. Wilkinson whether this man was really late that day or not, and as they have not told us anything to the contrary, we will assume that that is proved.
          Now the District Attorney brought out the fact from Mrs. Bowen that when Lizzie sat there in the kitchen her hands were white and she was pale and distressed, as you know from the other witnesses. And I suppose from that, he is going to argue to you that she was not all covered up with rust and dust, that she got in the barn. Well, you will see the strength of that argument and think what it amounts to. Think whether she could not go up there and look. Whether she picked up anything there or not nobody knows; I don't know how he can tell that she was fumbling around with dusty iron and lead. There is no evidence here about it, and I have seen many a young woman and I presume most of them, who could walk out into the barn and come back without getting their hands dirty. So I will not stop long about that.
          Bridget told about the groan and Mullaly told about the scraping, speaking of her statements, but there is nothing else. Whether she said that or not we don't know. And if she did, it was nothing more than the statement that all of us are likely to make. When a thing has happened we imagine that we heard something; if it had not happened we should not have heard anything. How common that is. Then there were noises not connected with this tragedy which might actually have been heard---there are noises in that street; you were there long enough to find out about that; such noises are a common occurrence. Then it may be that the people in their excitement---Bridget in great excitement, because she was running about breathless to find out something, and Mullaly in the breathlessness of his zeal, may have got it wrong---may not have got it just right. It is not a serious matter. They may argue it for all it is worth on the part of the Commonwealth.
          She thought she heard Mrs. Borden come in. They undoubtedly will make something out of that, so I want your attention there to see about that. This comes now in the first place from Bridget Sullivan. She is asked, after detailing the circumstances to a certain point, "what happened then?" You recollect that Bridget had told Mrs. Churchill that Mrs. Borden had a note and had gone out---"hurried off; didn't tell me where she was going." So you see anything from Bridget about that note and about Mrs. Borden's coming in is all sustained. Now Bridget Sullivan says, in answer to the question, "What happened then?" " 'Oh,' I says, 'Lizzie, if I knew where Mrs. Whitehead's was I would go and see if Mrs. Borden was there and tell her that Mr. Borden was very sick.' " You see the confirmation about that note business right there, right off. What should she say that she should go and see Mrs. Whitehead, if Mrs. Borden was there, unless she (Bridget) knew that Mrs. Borden had a note, and supposed she had gone out, as they both did? Then Lizzie said, "Maggie, I am almost positive I heard her coming in, and won't you go upstairs and see?" Bridget said, "I am not going up stairs alone." Now, following the testimony down, the very next question is:
          "Before that time that she said that, had you been up stairs?" "A. No sir. I had been up stairs after sheets for Dr. Bowen."
          Now remember how that occurred. When Dr. Bowen came he wanted a sheet to cover up the body of Mr. Borden, and he called upon Bridget and Mrs. Churchill to get one. They went into the sitting room and took the key off the mantel and went up the back stairs (where you went), unlocked the door to Mrs. Borden's room, got the sheets and came down the back way. So Bridget had been up the back stairs to that room, but she had not been up the front stairs. Therefore when they got down stairs with the sheets Bridget and Mrs. Churchill knew that Mrs. Borden was not in her own room because they had been up there. Therefore they knew that she was not in the back part of the house, and Lizzie knew that she was not in the back part of the house because they went up to get the sheets into Mrs. Borden's room. See how plain that is when you look at the testimony, and it is brought out plainly in the testimony here in the questions that are asked by the Commonwealth. So you see that when Lizzie spoke about going up stairs to see if Mrs. Borden was in Lizzie meant the front stairs, because they all knew, the three of them, that Mrs. Borden was not in her own room and that if she was anywhere in the house she must be in the front part of the house.
          So Lizzie knew that Mrs. Borden had a note and had gone out, and Bridget knew that she had a note and had gone out, as they both believed; that she had seen her up in the room making the bed and finishing up before 9 o'clock and she had not seen her since, believing that she had gone out, and she recalled that she might have heard her come in before her father came back, before Mr. Borden did, and she said at once, "Go up and see if Mrs. Borden isn't up in her room. Mrs. Borden isn't here. I heard a noise as though she came in, and she must be up stairs in the front room some where. Go and see." Now, that is natural. They thought that she was in the upper and back part of the house, and there can be no doubt about that because Miss Russell testifies to the same thing, Mrs. Churchill does, Bridget Sullivan does, and then after they came down there it was that conversation about going to Mrs. Whitehead's occurred. "Q. What happened then? A. 'Oh,' I says, 'Lizzie, if I knew where Mrs. Whitehead's was, I would go and see if Mrs. Borden was there.'" Those two women were acting in perfect good faith about it, relying upon the truth of that note story which Mrs. Borden had told them. Then Bridget would not go up the front stairs because in order to go up the front stairs they must necessarily pass through the sitting room where Mr. Borden's dead body was lying, or else they must pass through the dining room way and go by the corner of the room. They went that way, and found Mrs. Borden was killed. Mrs. Churchill and Miss Russell tell precisely the same thing in substance about going up and finding Mrs. Borden.
          Now, the suggestion on the part of the Commonwealth would be if this evidence was not so clear, that Lizzie knew she was up there, and if you assume Lizzie had killed her, then, of course, it would be quite plain that she knew where she was, but if you do not presume the defendant guilty to begin with, it shows nothing until she is proved guilty. Then we have no difficulty with the statement of these three women. They define it and make it very plain.
          Mr. Borden, you will remember, came in, as I have said, about quarter of eleven o'clock. Now, the inference that Mrs. Borden had come in was the most natural thing in the world. Hearing some noise in the house, perhaps the shutting of a door---by and by we will say something about who might have shut it;---perhaps the movement of somebody else in that house that she heard,---she had no occasion to go to look and see; she was not called to, and her father came in, and, as Mrs. Borden had not appeared in the sitting room, you understand, and as the two women going up stairs found she was not in the back room up stairs, they would undoubtedly think if she had come in she was in the front part of the house, and then she recalled, as she thought she did, the fact, that she had heard a noise which indicated to her that Mrs. Borden had come in.
          Now I submit to you, gentlemen, that taking the testimony as it is here, and there is no other that I know of, it exactly and clearly gives the situation as it was, and just as they all acted.
          Then they say that she showed no feeling when her stepmother was lying dead on the guest room floor; that she laughed on the stairs. Well, Bridget said something about opening the door. She said she said, "Oh pshaw," and she said it in such a way that Lizzie laughed, standing somewhere at her room door, a room where she could not see into the guest chamber, and the door of which, so far as we know, was closed. Nobody knows anything about it. What was there then why she should not laugh? Oh, they say, she had murdered her step-mother. Oh, hold on. That is not proved yet. You might think that everything was all right in your house, and somebody cracks a joke on you and you laugh, but if the evidence should turn out that your son had fallen dead on the floor above, that does not warrant the conclusion that you were laughing when his dead body was lying on the floor, because you did not know it. They say, she knew it. Well then, I should agree if she knew it and was laughing and joking about what Bridget said that she should be blamed, and we would criticize her and condemn her, but they have not any evidence of it. They assume it, and the District Attorney opened it, that while the dead body of Mrs. Borden was lying in the guest chamber Lizzie laughed. Well, the inference was that she had murdered her and then laughed; but that is assuming what they have not proved. They say she did not look at her dead father. Well, she had looked at him with horror. She had come in from the outside into the back hall-way and had come into the kitchen, and the door stood a little ajar, and she started to go into the sitting room when this horrible sight met her gaze. She had seen her father. Did they ask her to go and wring her heart over the remains that were mutilated almost beyond recognition? And because she did not rush into the sitting room and stand over against that mutilated body they say she is guilty. Why, Mrs. Churchill and Bridget Sullivan and Miss Russell could not pass through there except they touched the corner after the body was covered. Let us ask of other innocent people the same thing that you would ask of Lizzie. They say that Miss Lizzie did not show any signs of fear, but that Dr. Bowen and Mr. Sawyer were afraid. They told you about it. Well, how do they know she did not show any signs of fear? Why do they make any such statement as that? Because she said to Bridget, "You must go and get somebody, for I can't stay in this house alone." Is not that a cry of distress? "Go and get somebody. Go to Dr. Bowen's house. Go for Alice Russell. Go somewhere. I can't be alone." Look at things in a natural and easy way, in a common-sense way, assuming her innocence and not assuming her guilt. That is the way you will meet these things and all of these facts. Then they start off on another task, and they say she killed her step-mother and her father because that was a house without any comforts in it. Well, gentlemen, I hope you all live in a better way than the Borden family lived, so far as having good furniture and conveniences. Are your houses all warmed with steam? Do you have carpets on every one of your floors, stairs and all? Do you have pictures and pianos and a library, and all conveniences and luxury? Do you? Well, I congratulate you if you do. This is not a down-trodden people. There are lots of comforts in our country homes. I know something of them, but I remember back in my boyhood we did not have gas and running water in every room. We were not brought up that way. We did not have such things as you saw in the Borden house. It wasn’t in a poverty-stricken, desolate quarters like a shanty where the folks simply live and breathe and do not eat anything. They paraded here the bill of fare for breakfast. I do not know what they are going to talk about, what sort of breakfast the ordinary country people have in their houses. They do not live as well as we do in hotels, perhaps they live better. I do not wish to say a word against the hotel, but perhaps a coarser fare is as good as the fixed up notions that we get on the hotel table, but at any rate it is the way people live in our towns and cities, and no considerable number of people have come to harm. Andrew Borden was a simple man, an old fashioned man. He did not dress himself up with jewelry. He carried a silver watch. He was a plain man of the everyday sort of fifty years ago. He was living along in that way. His daughters were brought up with him. They had become connected with prominent things in Fall River, for they lived at home; they had the things which you saw about them. You all know well enough they were not poorly supplied, and were not pinched and were not starved into doing this thing. Do you think it looked as if they were starved into the crime and pinched into wrong? Here was a young woman with property of her own. Starved to death, they say; pinched so she could not live, wrought up to frenzy and madness, so that she would murder her own father for the want of things, and yet, as has been shown here, worth, in her own right of money and personal property from four to five thousand dollars, owning also real estate in common with her sister there in Fall River. What is the use of talking about that? Did she want any more to live on in comfort? Do they say they wanted to get her father's property, or half of it? Do they reason that she went and killed the step-mother first so that when the property came by inheritance it would pass to herself and her sister? They must say something. They say she killed her step-mother because of trouble. That is one of the arguments about which I will speak by and by; but then there is no trouble with her father, as they see, and then she had a change of purpose, or she had a double purpose---to kill Mrs. Borden because she did not like her, and to kill her father because she liked him but she wanted his money. What sort of a compound are you making out of this defendant by any such argument as that? ---two motives running through it inconsistent with each other, each directed independently to a specific end; carried out as to one in the early part of the morning, and then not only changed her dress and cleaned herself and became another woman, but found herself inhabitated with a distinct motive, and then slaughtered her father.
          Sometimes when a young man goes on a rig and becomes dissolute and a spendthrift, he will do almost anything to retrieve what he calls the misfortunes that he has brought even upon himself, and many an old father has found the gray hairs in his head multiplied because of the waywardness of his boy. Sometimes these great crimes are committed in that way, but if you expect to find it in this case that a young woman like her was slaughtering her father, when she herself was moral, and upright and Christian, and charitable, and devoted to good things in this world, you will find something that the books have never recorded, and which will be a greater mystery than the murder itself.
          Then they tell us about the ill feelings. Well, gentlemen, I am going to consider that in a very few words, because I say to you that the government has made a lamentable failure on that question. They say that is the motive that so qualifies the different acts that are testified to here that it puts this defendant in close connection with the murder of Mrs. Borden, and then they say that Mrs. Borden being murdered, Lizzie murdered Mr. Borden for his property, or possibly they may say, murdered him to conceal her crime,---for that or some other reason, but it does not rest at all on this foundation of family relations. Let us see what there is in it. What have they proved? They have proved that from five or six years ago Lizzie did not call Mrs. Borden "Mother." Lizzie is now a woman of thirty-two or thirty-three years old, thirty-two when these crimes were committed. Mrs. Borden was her step-mother; she was not her own mother. It is true that Mrs. Borden came there when Lizzie was a little child of two or three years, and sometimes we see that where a step-mother has come into a family and has brought up a family the children know no difference and always call her "Mother" just the same. That is true in a very large degree, happily so too, but sometimes when the children get grown up and when they are told about their mother that died long ago, some how or other there springs up in the mind of the children a yearning or a longing to know of the parent that they really had, and how many a man says in speaking of the family from which he came, "She is not my mother." He calls her mother, perhaps. He introduces her as "My mother", but the first words after you engage him in conversation are, "She is not my mother; she is my step-mother. My own mother died long ago. She lies buried twenty five years, but still she was my mother."
          I suspect that never a man never lets into the inner chambers of his heart the feeling that anybody else in the world can stand where his own mother did. You may close it over, you may talk about it as much as you will, but happy is the man that remembers his mother, that pure mother that lived to see him grow up, and kind as anybody else may be, there never goes out of his heart the feeling for that dead one that is gone, that stood first and foremost with him and nursed him in his baby-hood. It does not require passion or ill will to hold that feeling, begotten in the heart. Show me not the man that does not stand for the reputation and character of his mother, for nobody forgets that his own mother was the one he first was interested in, although he from a prattling child has never known her to remember her.
          Now, says Mr. Fleet, in his emphatic police manner, Miss Lizzie said to him, "She is not my mother; she is my step-mother." Perhaps she did. We will assume she said it, but there is nothing criminal about it, or nothing that indicates it, or nothing that savors of a murderous purpose, is there? Why, Martha Chagnon, a very well-looking little girl that was here a day or two ago, stepped on the stand and began to talk about Mrs. Chagnon as her step-mother. Well, I advised the City Marshal to put a cordon around that house, so that there will not be another murder there. Right here, in your presence she spoke of her step-mother, and a good-looking woman came on the stand afterwards, and I believe the blood of neither of them has been spilled since that time. Why, Lizzie, who undoubtedly speaks in just that positive way, you saw, when the police asked her about where she was and what she was doing, spoke positively. There are a good many people living in New England who will do the same. They know when they are insulted, and are free in expressing their minds, and sometimes do so too freely and talk too much, but we never think they are going to murder anyone. Now, you have got the whole thing right there in that statement, as they call it. Now, they say that Mrs. Gifford told us this. It was told on the stand. Let us have it for all it is worth. She is the cloak maker, you remember. I do not discredit her. "'Don't say mother to me. She is a mean good-for-nothing thing.' I said, 'Oh, Lizzie, you don't mean that?' And she said, 'Yes, I do. I don't have much to do with her. I stay in my room most of the time.' And I said, 'You come down to your meals, don't you?' And she said, 'Yes, but we don't eat with them if we can help it.'" That is the whole of it. That was a year ago last March. Now, my learned friend who opened the case said that Mrs. Gifford would say that she hated her, so my friend, the District Attorney, who makes the argument, will take out that, will admit she did not say any such thing. You heard her story on the stand here, and that was not so.
          Now I agree with you right off that that is not a good way to talk. I agree with you that Lizzie A. Borden is not a saint, and, saving your presence, I have some doubts whether all of you are saints; that is to say, whether you really never speak hurriedly or impatiently. I hope that is so for the peace of your families, but I do know good looking men, just as good looking as you, if you will allow me to say it, that speak sometimes in their households a little bit hastily and quickly, and sometimes the daughters do, and sometimes the fathers and mothers do. It is to be regretted that they do, but they will. And yet we don't read of murders in those houses. There is nothing to indicate any deep seated feeling. You will hear people speak to each other on the street in such a way that if you thought it really amounted to anything, it would shock you.
          Now, is there anything bad about this case where a woman like this defendant who speaks out openly and frankly and says right out, "She is not my mother; she is my step-mother."? She spoke so about the man who was called a Portuguese. What did she say? "He is not a Portuguese; he is a Swede." in just the same tone of voice.
          That is her way of speaking, you will find on this testimony, and she speaks right out. Now, those people are not the ones who do the harm in this world. The ones who do harm are like the dog that does not make any noise about it.The dog that comes around to your heels and barks is not the one that bites. It is the one that stays inside and looks serious, you will find. So it is with individuals. It is not the outspoken, blunt and hearty that are to be heard about it that do the injury. But now I do not want to trouble myself about it. That is one single declaration, and that is all that the Government has shown with Bridget Sullivan who lived in that family two years and nine months, who was nearer to all of them than anybody else. She tells you the condition of the household. She says though brought in constant contact with them she never heard anything out of the way. There was no quarreling; everything seemed cordial among them. The girls did not always go to the table; they were often out late, and I suppose they did not get down to breakfast as early as the old folks. The longer ago that you were born, the earlier you will probably rise now. If you were born seventy years ago you will probably be up in the morning by four o'clock and be disposed to find fault with the Creator that it cannot be summer all the time with more light and longer days. But the girls did not come down until they wanted to. They had a right to do that. Bridget says she never heard a word of complaint. And mark you that Thursday morning on which they tell you that Lizzie was entertaining that purpose or plan to murder both these people---that is their theory and is what they will undertake to satisfy you of---that Lizzie was talking with Mrs. Borden. Bridget Sullivan says, "I heard them talking together calmly, without the least trouble, everything all right." Mr. Borden talks about the meal and the conversation goes on in the usual way without the slightest indication of any ill feelings. That is the way my people do at home. That is the way your family greets you, in ordinary conversation. They are waiting for you to come back just now, and they will meet you in the same way I know, and there will be no suspicion about it.
          Oh, they say, just look at her,---wretch and fiend and villain that she was, she could put all this on when she had terrors unimaginable in her heart and purposes that no language can describe. Well, gentlemen, you have to judge of people according to the ordinary things. There being no proof of such purposes on her part, you will not justify yourselves in ascribing them to her. You will remember that Mrs. Raymond, the dressmaker, a lady to all appearances, who came and testified of their being together a few months before, four of them, during dress making, sitting in the guest chamber sewing, a regular dressmaking party. Phillip (sic) Harrington ought to have been there and had the whole style developed to him, to learn more than he knows, if it is possible to put anything into his head on the subject. There they are. Was that an angry family? Was that a murderous group?
          You take another thing: you have them there as Bridget says, and there is no evidence to the contrary, they have told you the whole thing, when Emma Borden comes on the stand to tell you the inside condition of the family, and they will say to you that Miss Emma Borden, the sister who was away from home on a visit at this time, against whom they have not the slightest suspicion, but about whom they will say that her sisterly affection carries her along to swing her from the truth. You will judge of her. I will not apologize for her. She has a right to be where her sister is. It is creditable that she does stand by her and it will take a long time for a man to say in his heart she is untruthful for telling what she does here. She went on to say that they had trouble five or six years ago in regard to the property and there was no resentment; so far as Lizzie was concerned it was all adjusted. When we get the open and unrestrained testimony of Miss Emma we are told there was trouble. The father had put in Mrs. Borden's hands a piece of property, and she says we did not feel satisfied and we told him so, and then came the word to us through another person, Your father is all ready to give you a property for yourselves, to make it even, if you will only ask for it. They asked for it and got it. And Emma says she never felt just right about it afterwards. She says up to the day of the death of Mrs. Borden she had not overlooked it, but she says as to Lizzie there never was any trouble about it,---never was after that time. There is a difference between the two girls. One blurts out exactly as she feels; the other bears what she is called upon to endure in silence. You will find the same fact, separate and distinct dispositions often in the same family. From that time, five years, more than half of it covered by the residence of Bridget Sullivan, there is no word of any trouble, or indication of anything except this remark made to Mrs. Gifford. If you take the whole of it, if Mrs. Gifford has not slipped in a single word,---take it all, what is there in it that signifies anything? Enough to find the motive for these dastardly crimes? But there is another thing: Here was an old man with two daughters, an older one and a younger one. They had gone on together. He was a man that wore nothing in the way of ornament, of jewelry but one ring, and that ring was Lizzie's. It had been put on many, many years ago when Lizzie was a little girl, and the old man wore it and it lies buried with him in the cemetery. He liked Lizzie, did he not? He loved her as his child; and the ring that stands as the pledge of plighted faith and love, that typifies and symbolizes the dearest relations that is ever created in life, that ring was the bond of union between the father and the daughter. No man should be heard to say that she murdered the man that so loved her. Old fashioned man, lived in a simple way, did not care anything about the frivolities of life, not attractive perhaps to some of the younger and go ahead people, but one who lived in his own way, had worked himself up to what would be called a fortune, had taken care of it, was then superintending its use and the income, and for all that on his little finger was that ring which belonged to his little girl. You may tell me if you want, that the relation between that parent and child was such that alienation was complete and wrong was the purpose of her heart, but you will not ask me to believe it. Mind you too, that on this question of the relations of these people there is not a word that comes from Mr. Morse of any ill feeling, or from Miss Russell or any other living person, and so I think you will agree with me that there is not anything whatever in this assumption that the feelings were such that this defendant could have had this guilty intent and worked out this guilty act.
          I pass. The learned District Attorney in his opening said that there was an impassable wall built up through that house. But the moment we got at the wall, down it went, doors flew open, and instead of showing a line in the house shut in and hedged in by locks, we find that Mr. Borden's room was doubly and trebly locked, Bridget's room was locked and Mrs. Borden's door was locked, and you find Miss Lizzie's room locked, as well as Emma's, the guest chamber locked, the parlor and the sitting room---I don't know but what everything, and that was all because there had been a burglary in the house and barn, as it came out in the story, and Mr. Borden, old fashioned man that he was, thought they wanted to lock the house pretty securely. He kept a safe in that back room in which he kept valuables. This was locked day and night, and no little care was given to the fastenings of the doors in all parts of the house. But you see the impassable wall was not as against the two girls but was simply a matter of protection to keep people out. If it was an impassable wall and not to keep people out, why did they have a lock on the door to the back stairs and why did they lock up the attics?
          They say she rushed in from the outside and discovered the homicide. There is no proof of that. In another place they say she did not go out of the house. They claim in one breath that she did not go to the barn, and then say that she rushed in and discovered the homicide. Rushed in from where, if she did not go out? But if after she discovered it, she passed in and saw the horrid sight, the testimony shows that she retreated to the side door and got as far from it as she could. She undoubtedly dreaded an attack from the murderer who had killed her father and she would naturally get as far from the body of her father as she could, and she stood at the closed screen door with the open wood door behind it and shouted to Bridget. Bridget was the quickest to respond. She could not go to the front part of the house, for there was nobody there, without passing the horrible sight, her dead father. Where could she go? Where would you go under the circumstances? She called for Bridget to run and get some one as quickly as she could. If she had murdered those two people, do you think she would have called for Bridget as quick as that? Would not she have gone down the street or done something of that kind where she would not have been seen in such close proximity to the scene of this tragedy. But she went and shouted for Bridget and asked her to come down, all in trepidation and alarm, to find Mr. Borden killed. You cannot faint away, you cannot look pale when you try to and so when Bridget had gone this woman stood pale and trembling by that open door on that August morning and looking over she saw Mrs. Churchill. Mrs. Churchill too saw her and observed the distress she was in and as she stood by the closed window where she could not speak to her she hurried at once to the open window and called out, "Oh, Lizzie, what is the matter?" Have you any patience with any man who will tell you that Lizzie stood at that door that morning like a marble statue without any feeling? What drove Mrs. Churchill to that window? Nothing but that picture of distress and agony that she saw across that narrow space and then she went over and Lizzie says, "Oh, Mrs. Churchill, come quick." and she went as quickly as she could. What do they want people to do? Then when she got there, she was crying, she was faint. At that they bathed her, trying to restore her, Dr. Bowen, Mrs. Churchill, Miss Russell, Mrs. Bowen all contributing to get her to lie on the lounge in the dining room. Oh, but they say she was a hardened rascal and did not want to lie down. It was all a make up. Did she grow pale and faint all for a sham? Let us have some consistency in this case. I said crying. The District Attorney said she did not cry. But Bridget says she did, and Bridget was there and Brother Moody was not. Bridget said in her former testimony in answer to Mr. Knowlton that she was crying. You heard the evidence read by Miss White, the stenographer who took it down, but now Bridget says she does not remember it. But we will take it as we find it under oath. Bridget says she never saw her so distressed and agitated before. I have told you about Mrs. Bowen. All these three people were sick in the house on Tuesday, including Lizzie. It was in August weather and whether they had eaten something or the weather had caused it we do not know, but the Government seems to be floundering around with the idea that because Bridget was not sick, they had been poisoned. There is no evidence of this. I have known the time in my own family that sometimes two or three members fell sick and one escaped. It is not uncommon for several in one family to have the grip and the rest escape it. They are to be congratulated. You cannot draw any inference from that. Then it was said she went round to see Miss Russell Wednesday, and told her about the burglary, and how the father was aroused and took her to Dr. Bowen and was not going to pay a bill. He was a man who spoke his mind, and Lizzie was getting worried about it. They had had a burglary in the house and in the barn, which is not contradicted, and she was getting alarmed, and she said so and talked about going to Marion. Miss Russell said, You had better go, and she finally said she would. She goes down there and talks it over. Naturally she would. Miss Russell had visited there and told her all about it. Those were indications, they say, that crime was in her heart. There are a good many people, we may say that believe in premonitions, and things will happen sometime for which we see no adequate cause for predicting and often the succeeding events happen through a mere coincidence, there is no connection between the two, but an event will so happen as to seem to furnish a connection. I do not say it is one way or the other. It is not for me to declare, but you will recollect that Miss Lizzie's illness was continuing at that time, and we know from sad experience that there is many a woman at such a time as that is all unbalanced, her disposition disturbed, her mind unsettled for the time being and everything is out of sorts and out of joint and she really is disabled for a period of time. Now that appears to have been the case at this time. It is a common fact and a common explanation in every day life and you cannot overlook it.
          There was talk about poison and poison was feared in the family because all had been made sick. Then they say for some reason, I don't know what, that Miss Lizzie went down stairs in the cellar that Thursday night. Well, she did with Miss Russell. But what did they do? They did what a good many of us have to do at home. They did something about the house. There had been people there examining the room and looking over the bodies and there was water in the pitcher up in her room and people had been washing there during the day and Mrs. Holmes said, "If I should stay there all night I should want the slop pail emptied." These two young women went downstairs. You will be inclined to say there was not any criminal act in that, especially as Miss Lizzie took Miss Russell with her and everything was seen that they did. They say after that Miss Russell returned and Lizzie came with the light all round and sat it on a table in the lower wash room and went over and stooped down near the sink. I will not say she did not stay there all the time,---stooped down, but she really did straighten up at length and get back up stairs and took the light with her. What of it? What of it? They say that those clothes which were taken off the dead bodies were lying there in a pile. Very well. Take it for what it is worth. But that house was surrounded by policemen and officer Hyde was there and Miss Lizzie had a full grown kerosene lamp in her hand and the windows were all open with ample opportunity for observers outside to see in and those within the house knew that policemen were all round so that there was nothing concealed. Now a person who is going to do anything to cover up crime will not carry an electric light with him. You don't usually travel round when contemplating crime, in that way. The criminal goes into the dark to do his dark deed. Miss Lizzie did not see anybody though they say Officer Ferguson was in front, but he is not brought forward, and if he were he could not see through two high board partitions. That would tax the energy and perspicacity of even a Fall River policeman. Where is Ferguson? He is not here, so he did not see anything.
          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.
          Then they say she burned a dress. Well, the general thought in the mind of everybody is that if a person burns up anything in connection with some important transaction, he does it to get it out of the way for the purpose of avoiding observation. That is natural. In the olden days in New England a rag bag was the most common thing in a household, and rags were sold to the paper makers because they were worth something to them, but nowadays when rags are not worth anything you have almost to pay a man to take them away from the house, the paper makers do not want them, and a common way of getting rid of old things is to put them into the fire and burn them up to save being annoyed and pestered by tramps. The Government stakes its case on that dress. The Government says: You gave us up the blue dress that lies before me. That is not the dress. You practically commit a falsehood by giving us that. The defendant says that is the dress. The Government says, we want that Bedford cord and if we had that Bedford cord we should know all about it, and you burned the Bedford cord. Now let us look at it. There is a dispute here, a disagreement, not intentional but unavoidable among the persons who saw what Lizzie had on that morning, some of them saying that she had this very dress, or a dark-blue dress, and another and Mrs. Churchill speaking of it as a lighter blue than that, coming almost up to a baby blue, or something a good deal lighter than this. Now between the two there is a difference of recollection, just as good people on one side saying it was a dark blue as those on the other who say it was a light blue. But you will remember that at that time there were several ladies in there and Bridget was there with a lighter colored dress, so that those who speak of a lighter colored dress may have had in mind what Bridget had on. It was not a time for examining colors and afterwards they recollected as well as they could. They are good honest people, but some of them are mistaken and of course are not wilfully stating what they do not believe to be the fact. So that there is a conflict of testimony about that. That dark blue dress lying here has (been) given as the one Lizzie had on. They say you had a light-blue dress. We say it is not so, and a number of witnesses say it is not so, but we say to you when we produced the dark blue dress you took it and put it into the hands of Dr. Dolan, the medical examiner, and you went away with it and used it in framing your indictment, and now you find through Professor Wood, a man who knows something, instructing Dr. Dolan, that there is not and never was any blood on it. Then the Government does not want that dress but another. They want the Bedford cord. We will talk about it then. Let us look at it. Suppose they had this Bedford cord. Lizzie had it on, you say, that morning. That is the present theory. The Government said she had it on up to twelve o'clock so that she did not change to the pink wrapper until that time. The witnesses all say and every single person who has testified says that while she was there and about with them, including Mrs. Churchill, Bridget and Dr. Bowen, Mrs. Bowen and others, that there was not a particle or spot of blood on it. They say there was no blood on her hands, her face or hair. I am talking now of the dress, principally. Now recollect that she had that on. Policemen were coming in all about there. She was lying on the lounge. They tell you that the dress was covered, or had blood spots on it and not a living person saw or suggested it. Suppose she did burn it up, the time that had elapsed for observation would be long enough. They had all had it to look at at that time. They had all seen her and every one says that there was not a spot of blood on it. So you see you start with a dress that every one of the witnesses they produced says did not have blood upon it. Now, you have removed from that all idea that that dress was burned with a wrongful intent because all the witnesses say it was perfectly clear of blood. Now what more? That dress was in that closet, you gentlemen saw it over the front door and there it remained. In that closet were 18 or 20 dresses and the Government witnesses claimed that they did not see any such dress notwithstanding that Miss Lizzie had eight blue dresses of different shades in that hall closet. They examined and did not see any that had a particle of blood upon them and so now the pretence of the Government is that that dress was not in there; but Miss Emma says when she came home on Thursday night she went to the closet room to put away her clothes, and that on Saturday night she was there again and that dress was hanging on the second nail of the nails that were driven into the edge of the shelf. She says she discovered that old dress hanging there that had been covered with paint ever since May, and by covered with paint I mean, stained and daubed with it. She says she spoke to Lizzie about it, saying, why don't you get rid of that thing? I can't find a place to hang my dress on. It had been in there and Saturday night they ransacked this place and found the dress with what they supposed was blood upon it. It was carried to Dr. Dolan who made the discovery certain to their mind that would convict this woman and so they did not want anything else. They went through the form of looking over everything else but had got the damning evidence here; but when Dr. Dolan conversed with a man who knew something, they were told it was not blood at all, and then they said: Get us another dress. Now is it true, was there grease or paint on it? We have brought you the painter here that painted that house a week early in May and we have brought a dressmaker who made the dress, and the painter has told us that Lizzie did the superintending of the painting and got up at six o'clock in the morning to see that the paint was of the proper color and says that she tried it on the side of the house. You have heard Mr. Grouard who testified that that dress had got soiled and said it was not fit to wear, and then it was not worn of any account, except on the days when she had dirty work to do, and Emma knew about it: Mrs. Raymond knew about it, and it is the indisputable fact that it was besmeared with paint and it was not fit for anything else. Why, we are talking about a dress that did not cost but 12-1/2 or 15 cents a yard, and took 8 or 9 yards to make it, and did not cost altogether when it commenced, probably over $2 and was not good for anything after they got it done, because the material was so poor, wearing out and fading out. And then it got dirty, got paint on it, and what more did they want of it? As Emma said, "Put it out of the way, why do you keep that old thing?" This morning, you remember, was after the police has searched everything in the house so completely that there was nothing more to be found unless they took the paper off the walls and the carpets off the floors, and we will take their word for it. Unless that, there was nothing more to be seen and nothing more to be found, and they had had all they wanted and had got her clothes and her stockings and even an unmade dress pattern and wanted to see if that had not been made up into some sort of a mantle to wrap her up in. They had got the whole thing and looked over everything, and had taken all they could find and all they wanted and notified them that they had got all through. Then, in obedience to Emma's injunction, Lizzie walks into the kitchen with it that Sunday morning, the windows all open, no blinds shut, policemen in the yard, looking right in at everything that was going on---and deliberately, and in the presence of Emma, Emma saying to her, "Well, I think you had better do it,"---put it into the fire and burnt it up. Had not she time enough from Thursday morning down to that time to burn it up without anybody's knowing it, if that was covered with blood? Had not she time enough to have got it out of the way? And if she had that purpose to cover up this crime, if she had committed it, would she have burned it in the presence of her sister and Miss Russell, and said she was going to do it? That is not humanly probable. Now you have got the whole thing about the dress. There is no concealment about it. And when Miss Russell in her trepidation, and having been advised by somebody about it, came to her and said, "I think you have done the worst thing you could in burning that dress," Lizzie spoke up in her prompt and honest way, saying, "Oh, why did you let me do it, then?" reproaching them for not advising her against it. And then, truthful as they are, when they knew Miss Russell had been questioned about the matter, they said, "Tell all you know about it." And Miss Russell walks in to the man Hanscom and says she has come to tell him because they said "Go and tell all about it." Lizzie said, "Go and tell all about it." It does not hurt people sometimes to tell the truth, to tell all about it. You find people like this defendant that speak sometimes impulsively and suddenly, but after the brain within that leads them to utter the truth although the circumstances might seem to indicate suspicion around them.
          But, gentlemen, they hang upon that one blue dress. They have it in the testimony now; they know all about it. Their own witnesses that they bring here do not help them at all in this theory. But I ask them this: if Lizzie Borden killed her mother at 9:45 o'clock in that morning, and then was ready to come downstairs and greet her father and meet him, having on that blue dress, do you think that is probable, besmeared and bedaubed as she would have been with the blood of the first victim? Standing astride her and chopping her head into pieces by those numerous blows, blood flying all over the walls and the furniture, on the bed and everywhere, wasn't she touched all over with that testifying blood?
          Then of course they are going to say, "Oh, but she changed her dress, and then when she killed her father she either had that back again or she put on another." Did she have it back again? Then she had to put that on over her clothes again and over her person, exposing herself to have her underclothing soiled in that way, a thing not probable in any way. And then if she put on another dress, then there were two dresses to burn and dispose of, instead of one, and the government only wants one---they have all the rest. Think of it! That she walked right into that sea of blood and stood there slashing it over herself in the first murder, and then went and took off that dress and laid it away until her father came in, and then dressed herself for the second slaughter. It is horrible to contemplate. I said it was not morally or physically possible. And yet the government is driven to that extremity in its theory about this case.
          Well, they will go another step yet in their theory, I think likely. I would not wonder if they are going to claim that this woman denuded herself and did not have any dress on at all when she committed either murder. The heart waits to learn what theories they will get up about this woman without evidence. First, create your monster, and then put into him the devil's instincts and purposes, and you have created a character. But start with a woman, with woman's impulses and a daughter's love, and your imaginings are foreign and base.
          Then they say that she murdered these two people because Mrs. Reagan---I forbear almost to mention her name---came up here and told you that those sisters had a quarrel, and that Lizzie said to Emma, "You have given me away." Gentlemen, if there is anybody given away in this case it is Mrs. Hannah Reagan, and nobody gave her away but herself. And she is gone so completely that the government did not think it worth while to call her on the stand again. The whole business came out here, and I dare to say to you that I shall call your attention to whether you think that those bald and blank statements of Mrs. Reagan, supported as they actually are by Marshal Hilliard when he is recalled to the stand---they brought him in for his good looks, not because he was going to contradict the witnesses for the defence, because he actually sustained them. But you have Mr. Charles J. Holmes and Mrs. Holmes and Mrs. Brigham and John R. Caldwell. Now I have got out of the church, you know: I do not mean I have got out of all church, because I presume Caldwell goes somewhere, but what I mean is, we have got out of the church that the Holmes go to and the Bordens go to. You know sometimes people say that because people go to the same church they will say anything---I do not believe that. But we have got right over among the reporters for the solid truth, now, and we have got John R. Caldwell and Thomas F. Hickey and John J. Manning. They come out of different papers and out of different cities, and those gentlemen tell you they went to Mrs. Reagan and she said there was not a word of truth in it: and while Mr. Caldwell was trying to find out the facts from Marshal Hilliard, that official, in the abundance of his politeness, told him to get out. My learned friend asked Hickey if it was not a "scoop" between the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald. I am not going out of my way to advertise those papers: they are enterprising papers and they do a great business and are always looking out for getting scoops on one another: but Mrs. Reagan got scooped pretty badly. Met by everybody, isn't she, when Emma says that from first to last there has been no ill feeling between them and that there is not the slightest foundation for this story. And we forbore to call Mr. Buck or anybody else who knew anything about the matter: we might have done so but you were tired: you said, "Deliver us from any more Mrs. Reagan or anything she can tell us."

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