1. "Why the bell?"
Posted by harry on Oct-25th-02 at 10:15 PM

I was reading Bridget's trial testimony and ran across a curious item. They are talking about Andrew and Abby's bedroom. (Page 267) She is being questioned by Robinson.

Q.  Their  bedroom door. Going up the back stairs you would reach their bedroom door, and that key was kept on the mantel in the sitting-room unless it was in use up there?
A.  Yes, sir.
Q.  There is a bell that hangs there in Mrs. Borden's room, I suppose you know?
A.  Yes, sir.
Q.  An old bell?
A.  Yes, sir; I have seen it.
Q.  But that is not connected with the front door knob, is it?
A.  I don't know anything about it.
Q.  Did you ever hear it ring up there?
A.  No, sir; I don't remember.
Q.  The bell you did hear ring was downstairs?
A.  I didn't hear any bell that morning.
Q.  No, I don't mean any particular time.
A.  No, sir; in the kitchen.
Q.  But while you were there was that bell upstairs, to your knowledge, ever in use?
A.  No, sir; I don't know anything about the bell upstairs. Always the bell I heard was in the kitchen.
Q.  Well, that is it. All the bell you ever heard was in the kitchen?
A.  Yes, sir.

Why the curiosity by Robinson of this bell?  What was it's purpose?
Any ideas?

Maybe it is a remnant of the 2-family home which the house once was.
A doorbell to notify the upstairs family had a visitor.
That would imply another doorbell for the family in the lower portion of the house.
Maybe that bell was still active but never used.
Maybe Knowlton had a theory as to it's recent use?

How would a doorbell work in 1872, or 1845 for that matter?
For some reason I thought they were electrical....I guess I never thought about it before.

I was thinking of the remnant idea myself. That makes sense if that was the entrance to the upstairs rooms.

Was the front staircase there at the time it was a 2 apartment building? Or was that added when they did the conversion?  I should think it wasn't else the bell would have been on the door at the top of the stairs (Lizzie's) or the guest room door. If it wasn't, then the only way up to the second floor was via the back stairs which is where the bell was.

Electric door bells or buzzers existed quite some time before 1892.  In a book on the Lincoln assassination "In The Shadow of Lincoln's Death" by Otto Eisenchiml there are several paragraphs on doorbells in 1865.  He states: 

"The exact date when electric doorbells came into use in the United States has proved elusive. It is certain, though, that several years passed after Lincoln's death before electric doorbells were installed for domestic use." 

Until home electric became common I believe they were controlled by electric batteries.

The other day I found a list of what was invented when &
I don't remember seeing a doorbell, they did have burglar
alarms before the 1870`s, and barbed wire was new then also,
so the Borden's were up-to-date on some things at least.


EDIT:

1873
Joseph Glidden invents barbed wire.

1887
Rowell Hodge patents barbed wire.

(Message last edited Oct-26th-02  11:34 AM.)

Decades ago I lived in a house built before WW I that had a "bell" on the front door. Your turned a little handle, and it rang (sort of like a bicycle bell). There were also "brass knockers" on doors.

Perhaps to indicate that someone in the kitchen could have signalled to the second floor? Or maybe just to lull and distract the prosecutor and jury?

I agree with both of you that the probably disconnected bell upstairs was from the time the house was built as a 2-family dwelling. But notice that the testimony says "Mrs. Borden's room" upstairs, and to me that would imply that little room off the main bedroom which Mrs. B. used as her closet and where the desk and safe probably were. Or perhaps that meant those other little rooms above where the downstairs sink room was. That would make sense because if a bell were up there wouldn't they have put it closer to the outside of the house so it would ring upon being activated from downstairs than where the Borden main bedroom was.

Bridget said downstairs she heard the bell in the kitchen, but the kitchen was referred to to mean that whole area, the sink room, pantry and main stove room.  That would apply to to the area upstairs.  That wording has confused me before, like when Emma said she saw Lizzie standing by the stove with the Bedford cord dress to burn, yet supposedly she was in the sink room washing dishes, where the water was.  Yet again, this is confusing because how do we know they washed their dishes in the sink room?  They might have taken the water from the sink room, brought it into the main kitchen to warm on the stove, then washed the dishes in their where there was more room, and so Emma would then be placed in the same room as Lizzie and Alice at the time of the dress burning.

Maybe someone who lives around there can ask the people at the house where that old bell upstairs is.  No doubt it is still there.  

I just think the reference to "Mrs. Borden's room" was just Bridget's way of referring to that room instead of saying "Mr. and Mrs. Borden's room".  She refers to it several times that way and she may have been used to calling it that.  An example is her testimony at the trial (page 247):

Q.  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.
Q.  Into whose room?
A.  Into Mrs. Borden's and into the little room where he kept the safe.

Then at the Preliminary (page 86):

Q.  Where with reference to these back stairs was this room that was broken into when the money was taken, and the gold watch &c?
A.  At the top of the back stairs, Mrs. Borden's room.
Q.  Is that where the safe is?
A.  Going in from where Mrs. Borden's bed room is.
Q.  If I understand you, this room that was burglarized, when the house was entered sometime ago, was a room that led out of Mrs. Borden's room? You could get into it by going up the back stairs?
A.  You have to go into Mrs. Borden's room first.

Attached is a floor plan of the second floor. I have placed a red arrow pointing to the door to Mr. and Mrs. Borden's bedroom.  If you take away the front stairs the ONLY entrance to the ENTIRE second floor is through that door.  That's why I believe the bell had to be on that door.

Yes, good points.  Yet there is one little room in your plan that has no doors at all into or out of, that little room north of the room labeled "closet."  It had to be entered from somewhere and was close to the outside of the house and in the original floor plan it was part of the kitchen.

Also I think that the front steps, entrance and entrance stairs to the upstairs were added later.  My reasoning is that these were supposed to be two separate units and the person on the first floor would not have wanted the second floor people to have access through their living space...i.e. a front door where it is now.  So with only the north side entrance for both units both the first and second floor tenants would only have had one way in and out and either could have gotten into the other's unit.  The back hall would have been a front entry for both at that time, although from what I understand two families never lived in it, Mr. B. got a hold of it too soon and changed it.

Of course, someone is bound to come up with a floor plan for the initial building which will disprove my theory...and I would like to see that plan anyway. Do any of you architectural detectives have it or know who to bribe down at the records office to get it.  Ha!

I don't know the origin of the plan.  The liitle room north of the closet is the old sink room and there is a door (not shown on the plan) on the landing.

The front entrance would have acted as the entrance for the family who occupied the first floor. The side or back entrance would be for the family occupying the second floor.  Immediately inside the side door are the stairs leading up to the second floor.  There would have been no need to go through the first floor rooms.  The kitchen door to that small hallway could be closed effectively shutting off the first floor apartment.

Anyway, it's all speculation and as you say Carol, Andy made changes which altered the layout.  It would have been fun though to see the original building. Just to see if we could design it better than how it ended up.

Yeah, like adding a couple of hallways would have been nice!

Inquest
Emma
47
Q. How much of that time have they lived in that house on Second street?
A. I think, I am not sure, but I think about twenty years last May.
Q. Always occupied the whole house?
A. Yes sir.
Q. Somebody told me it was once fitted up for two tenements.
A. When we bought it it was for two tenements, and the man we bought it of stayed there a few months until he finished his own house. After he finished his own house and moved into it there was no one else ever moved in; we always had the whole.

So this fellow "Trafton" (Rebello, 34) was the owner, but we also know Mr. Pettee lived there previous to the Bordens.  If Trafton had that house Built as a two-family tenement it makes sense that during all that time from 1845 to 1872 other people would also live there with him.

I have always subscribed to the theory that the front part of the house was access to the lower family's rooms, and the side entrance was for the upper family.  That would be the easiest way to section the building.  As to the front stairs not being there as BuiLT, I don't know.  I can only think they would have been part of the original design even if just for fire exit purposes.  I suppose I can't picture that stairway NOT being there.

The plan is almost exactly the same as from Porter.
Pearson also uses "from Porter" in his book when he shows the floorplans.  The shape of the *fireplace* area in the elder Borden's bedroom is the same, as is the depiction of the chimney shape in Emma's bedroom.  (Porter, after pg. 51)
There does show a door to that "little room" near the outside wall.
........................
I think the previous tenants probably used a well. Andrew brought in "City water" as soon as it was available.

Andrew had to Remove a Kitchen from the room that became his bedroom.
He also took out a partition that divided the dining room (as in the division on the 2nd floor that created Emma's bedroom & Abby's dressing room). He also added a furnace and radiators.

Picturing it as a 2 family house:
Maybe--the parlour was the master bedroom and the dining room divided made 2 more bedrooms (depending on the family size). Then the Sitting Room would be the "common room" for the family and maybe they combined the kitchen with an eating area(That would be one family and the'd use the front door).
The 2nd story would be a duplicate, except they would have the benefit of the extra bedrooms in the attic, and they would use the side door as their front door. With the cellar in common?

In June of 1874, 2 years after Andrew purchased the house, he had two faucetts installed with running water.  Sometime soon or at the same time, he added the barn faucett--this happened within 6 months of City water first becoming available.  (LBQ, July '97).

There has been no mention of adding a staircase or front steps or entrance.

Something interesting in that LBQ article:  It showed the permit application for City water by Borden & Almy for their business premesis (signed for by Almy), and there was also a photo of the the app. of Abraham at Ferry Street, With His Signature, but the one for Andrew is MISSING, and thought "stolen".



(Message last edited Oct-27th-02  1:38 AM.)

This reminds me of a setup of a single family home (that was originally a funeral parlor in the 1800s, the embalming tables and such were still in the basement, but, I digress.) that was broken up into 2 apartments, 1st floor and second floor, I was friends with all the tenants, so I got to see the whole layout.  What was originally the front entry hall with the stairs going to second floor became the common hall for both apartments.  The doorway that went into the living room was fitted with locks and became the first floor tenants front door.  At the top of the stairs another door was put in to become a front door for the upstairs tenants.

Do you think it was possible in the Borden home that the front entry was a common area for the 2 family tenement as well as the side entry way?  All that would be needed there was a door to close off the kitchen.  I would think that both families would need access to the basement as well as the attic.  Then, I also thought, what about the privy setup?  I don't think you would have one privy for two families or would you?  There was the one in the basement and the old one in the barn.  I would think that the barn privy was the original, and that would be a long hike for the upstairs family if they had to come out the front door and run around the whole front and side of the house to get to the privy!  So, my thought would be that both sets of stairs were always there and both families would have had access to both. 

(Message last edited Oct-27th-02  4:48 PM.)

OMIGOSH.
Leave it to you to figure out the layout of that house set up for 2 families based on PRIVY USE.
And very useful a post, too!

  Well, it is something to consider, but, leave it to me is right!  Nothing is sacred at times.

Well since nothing is sacred I will say that I was cleaning litter boxes tonight and remembered there was no running water in that house until 1874, 2 years after the Bordens moved in. 

I don't know the ramifications of that, but William might?

If the privy closet in the cellar was an indoor outhouse prior to the water mains being connected?
And is that why there is a real outhouse in the back of part of the barn?
So it may be possible that all the families used the one in the barn, and we're not so dependent on access to the cellar anymore in our surmising?

(I tend to clean litter boxes creatively...)

So, you were creatively cleaning kitty privys?  Maybe that might actually have some sort of answer, how many cats per pan?  Like, how many people per privy?  Is there a cutoff amount?

Before the advent of the running water in the Borden home, I don't think there was a privy in the basement, I'm thinking that the one in the barn was to serve for the whole house.  But, then I was thinking if the downstairs family had only the front door access to outdoors, they would have the fun of running around the whole house to get to the privy.  Thats why I'm thinking that the side entry was crucial for both families, think of a cold New England winter and having to go outdoors to visit the privy, yikes, the quicker, the better!!! 

Cold New England winters are probably one reason each bedroom was fitted out with a slop pail.  People didn't necessarily trek out into the night if they needed to go after dark, as I know all too well.
Of course, there had been an old-fashioned well in the Borden yard (the one near the barn, which had apparently been filled in before 1892).  If that was the only source of water, the people who lived in the upstairs tenement must have had to carry large amounts of it upstairs for their Saturday-night baths.  However, there was a water tank in the attic, which was possibly a source of water for the upstairs family.
Maybe there had always been laundry facilities in the cellar for the use of both families?  There was an outside entrance, which would have made it easily accessible, besides making it easier to hang the clothes in the back yard.

Thats what I was thinking too, Edisto, that both families would need access to the basement to use the laundry room and possibly for coal and/or wood piles for their stoves and fireplaces.  I was thinking that the attic might be used by both for storage of things.

Yea, kitty litter led to pictures of slop pails in the rooms in the winter and people slogging thru snow to empty them next day out in the barn privy.
I assumed the cellar was"in Common" but not the attic.

In my teens I had friends who lived in old tenements. One still had the outdoor privies from the 19th century, the other had a communal toilet (one to a floor). No bathtubs; politically connected landlords. Both the 19th century style. Personal bathrooms were a late 19th century convenience. If you could look it up, you will see that early 19th century hotels had this arrangement.
I also had relatives living in the country who still had and used privies. You need a source of running water for flush toilets.

Some writers say Andy had the second floor water disconnected when he moved in. And never had a gas main connection. Is this typical of his miserliness? Or just an old-fashioned type of guy.

In the 1940s my relatives had NO electricity. No flush toilets (need an electric pump for this) and kerosene lanterns at night. No telephones until the late 1950s, and still no cable TV. It cost $1 a foot to run cable from the local road; that's over $6000!!!

After indoor plumbing, they still kept the privy (until the 1960s when a new generation took over). It was a two-holer w/ two doors but for one family. Ever use one of those "port-a-johns"?

He couldn't have running water disconnected when he moved in because it wasn't available to that part of the community until 1874.  Maybe WITH his political connections he GOT the water Board to bring the main to his street, who knows?

I was thinking about these census reports and tax rolls & city directories we've seen posted on here and realize that a HUGE amount of people lived with Other people.  These addresses have like 8 or 10 people or more.  And we don't know the size of the house.  But some places we can guess at would have a tenant (Family?) on the first floor, another on the second, and another in the attic!  That's a lot of unrelated people living together that are Not in apartment houses.

We be lucky today.

As recently as the 1950s, boarding houses were still very popular.  Younger, unmarried people often boarded with an unrelated family if they worked away from their own homes.  The Gardner family in Smithfield, N. C. (family of the late actress Ava Gardner) ran a boarding house for schoolteachers.  My father and his friends, who lived nearby, would go there to visit the girls and pick up dates.  (Ava was too young to be "picked up" at that time, but she had a couple of older sisters.)  My father himself lived in a boarding house, but not one that had accommodations for young women.  I lived across from a boarding house when I was first married.  On Sundays, the boarding house would serve a huge buffet meal for its own tenants and anyone else who cared to pay for the meal and eat there.  Most of the town would take Sunday dinner there.  It was quite delightful, and the food was wonderful.

Edisto, it sounds like such a wonderful way of life, a simpler, happier time.

I guess the closest I'll come to that is the potluck dinners my friends and I have occasionally.  Maybe not quite as homey as the boarding house, but, still served up with that sense of family and community. 

Your father dated Ava Gardner's sister Bappie?

Actually, I think one of his friends may have dated Bappy.  --Or perhaps it was the other sister (whose name I can't recall at the moment).  I believe my father dated one or more of the schoolteachers who boarded there.  He did remember Ava, because she was a great beauty even as a child.  That little town (Smithfield, N. C.) has an Ava Gardner museum in a storefront building.  Occasionally a famous person will stop by to pay homage to her.  It's quite interesting.  And of course Ava herself is buried there (in the cemetery, not the storefront museum).  I have an old friend from Wilson, N. C.  He showed me a yearbook from Atlantic Christian College, which his sister had attended with Ava Gardner.  Her (Ava's) yearbook picture was outrageously gorgeous.  You just knew she was going to be somebody.  I guess Ava Gardner wouldn't have made a good Lizzie, but maybe Nance O'Neil?

A few years ago they had a picture of Ava as a little girl
in an ad for some fragrance company, I can't remember which one,
the slogan was 'in praise of woman' or something like that,
she was quite a stunning looking toddler.

(Message last edited Nov-1st-02  8:48 AM.)

Ava was a BIG DEAL in our house!  So beautiful...too beautiful...there's nothing MORE beautiful than a beautiful woman.

Anyway, how did the bells work in the boarding house?  Or did they all just yell up the stairs like a Mickey Rooney movie?

Ah, yes...getting back to the subject at hand.  I just recalled this morning that I did once live in a boarding house, but it was only briefly and when I was a small child.  I don't believe we had any bells at all, except perhaps a front doorbell.  I have a friend who lived in one when she was in college.  According to her, a lot of hanky-panky went on in them, especially if they were coed.  People would sneak into other people's rooms in the dead of night.  My only memories are of a huge dining table with all sorts of people around it, passing dishes to one another.  I was about five at the time, and I developed a huge crush on one of the adult male boarders, who of course didn't know I was alive.  Kinda set the tone for my life, now that I think about it.

So if no one rung your bell, then you don't know if bells were rung?
--I'm being silly.  No need to answer

I like your sense of humor when you chime in Kat.

I live in a 50 year old house. We have no doorbell on the front door. We have one of those hand crank thingys on the screen door. The screen door hooks (no lock) but the front door has dead bolt and door lock. NOBODY knew how to operate the 'doorbell' so I had my honey write "doorbell" in black marker above it so our rare visitors didn't just bang away.

Last night some religious gents came to the door to convert me to Jesus and I guess they couldn't read the darn sign. They banged away for what seemed like 5 minutes. The whole house shook. I finally had to open the inner door to let them know I was not interested. And of course, once they had me in their presence they didn't want me to shut the door.

Anyway, back to the bell. You can turn it half way to make the bell chime. Then you have to let go and turn it half way again. It is very hard to make it work, actually. And awkward to boot. You try turning a small hand crank that is at shoulder height from left to right with your right hand. Feels very un-ergonomic! Maybe my visitors can sue for carpal-tunnel? Better not give them any ideas!