The Lizzie Borden Society archive

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1. "Locking the Clothes Press"
Posted by adminlizzieborden on Jan-8th-02 at 9:24 PM

By stefani on Wednesday, 12/19/2001 - 12:37 am [Edit] [Reply] [Msg Link]  
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Why would Lizzie lock her clothes press? I can understand locking her bedroom door, but why the up stairs walk in closet. To refresh your memories, it is a 5 by 8 foot room with a window directly over the front door. The windows were covered with paper to keep the light out (so says the preliminary hearing testimony) so the color wouldn't fade (I guess).

Why lock the clothes press?

 
By tinar on Wednesday, 12/19/2001 - 01:33 am [Edit] [Reply] [Msg Link]  
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These were Emma & Lizzie's dresses, so my guess is it was all part of the divided house games the family was playing, i.e. "This is OUR territory, keep out". After all, if any family was ever dysfunctional, it was the Bordens.

 
By kat on Wednesday, 12/19/2001 - 01:49 am [Edit] [Reply] [Msg Link]  
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Sort of a "you're locking your part of the house, so we're locking ours?" mental warfare?
Would this imply the girls were irate at the robbery suspicion falling on Lizzie?
If they were irate, then maybe they were innocent? (of the robbery...)

 
By kashesan on Wednesday, 12/19/2001 - 09:50 am [Edit] [Reply] [Msg Link]  
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The Bordens locked everything

 
By tinar on Wednesday, 12/19/2001 - 11:22 am [Edit] [Reply] [Msg Link]  
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It seems to me people who "lock everything" have a lot of fears and/or things to hide. Lots of internal stuff going on. Unfortunately, I think a lot of answers in this case were well hidden within those involved.

 
By raystephanson on Wednesday, 12/19/2001 - 02:11 pm [Edit] [Reply] [Msg Link]  
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Maybe it was just the custom of the time.
Didn't most closets have a lock on them, then? Even if a skeleton lock could open them?

 
By harry on Wednesday, 12/19/2001 - 02:28 pm [Edit] [Reply] [Msg Link]  
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The closet is hard to understand. They probably didn't want any guests when they visited going in there.

What is also hard to fathom is why they hooked the screen door. A simple pen knife could easily slit the screen and the invader could unhook it. Uncle John testified it was a "small hook" and that the regular wooden door was kept open at all times that time of year. The screen door would offer minimal protection, hardly worth the aggravation of hooking and unhooking it all day long.

Also, apparently Bridget opened the front door for Mr. Borden without even asking who it was at the door. At least there is no mention of her asking or looking out the window to see who it was.

 
By kat on Wednesday, 12/19/2001 - 10:09 pm [Edit] [Reply] [Msg Link]  
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Supposedly the "locking up" of all the doors & drawers happened after the robbery.
The locking could be symbolic--to them they were not locking OUT intruders (see Harry and the hook) so much as protecting property...from some implied vandal(?)
Maybe it WASN'T Lizzie who caused the "robbery", which story has been handed down...maybe it was Bridget snooping, and it got blown out of proportion so Andrew called off the police. Bridget's duties apparently did not call for her to be up the front stairs-but maybe she snuck around and pried, This may be why the girls called her "Maggie"-like MAGPIE, the bird that collects shiny objects...and so maybe Andrew's key being laid out in the open was a warning to BRidget, not Lizzie...(?)

 
By raystephanson on Thursday, 12/20/2001 - 02:30 pm [Edit] [Reply] [Msg Link]  
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Interesting questions, "kat", but unanswerable then or now. With ALL those snoopy police and reporters and doctors and etc. maybe it was just good sense to lock whatever they could?

 
By kat on Thursday, 12/20/2001 - 09:46 pm [Edit] [Reply] [Msg Link]  
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Yea, Stef was wondering aloud to me the other night, if Lizzie just locked that closet after the murders cause there was something in there to hide--and then just pretended that they always kept it locked. I added, that neither Morse nor Bridget would ever know the truth of this (if so), only EMMA.

 
By raystephanson on Friday, 12/21/2001 - 03:13 pm [Edit] [Reply] [Msg Link]  
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Years ago when I was a teenager my brother held a party while my parents went on vacation. When they returned, they found some things went missing, and never returned. Maybe the girls just used simple caution etc to safeguard their belongings. Certainly the police searched it all.

Do people keep their closets locked today? I once heard of not only doing this in an old house (newer homes since WW2 don't have locks on doors), but also putting a chain on the refrigerator. We all know about locked freezers, don't we?

 
By kat on Friday, 12/21/2001 - 08:56 pm [Edit] [Reply] [Msg Link]  
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When I was a boy, we never kept our front door, our back door or our 2 side doors locked-nor the garage, or windows which were always open. If we were that casual about "intruders' or "vandals" in 1965, how much more casual it must have been in the 1890's? (see Meet Me in St. Louis).
When a bedroon door was locked, in our house of 5 children, you can be sure someone was UP to Something!
The only door habitually kept locked was the BathRoom. HoHoHo

 
By raystephanson on Sunday, 12/23/2001 - 07:18 pm [Edit] [Reply] [Msg Link]  
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I refer to "closet doors" not having locks, of course. Back until the 1960s we never locked the doors except at night or when away from the house. Not that would have stopped anyone from breaking in!

But we didn't live in the downtown business area with hundreds of strangers passing by. E Radin tells of the boys who would pick up pears there (with the kind permission of Lizzie; no one else!).