Lizzie Borden Society Forum

I've not finished reading about y'alls theories on incest but I feel the majority of you believe it couldn't have happened due to the ages of the females there. How about rape? We know today that adults in relationships/marriages can and do rape their partners. What if Andrew was doing that to the daughters and help and Abby knew? What if he was doing it to all 4 of them? You can't discount it due to the time period.

Nobody can discount anything in this case, MysteryReader! However, if incest or rapes was inflicted upon the daughters on a long-term basis, why was it that Abby was attacked and murdered first and received far more blows than Andrew?

I can't see her participating in the incest, ie physically holding her stepdaughters down, so how do we explain the discrepancy in the rage shown during the murders? Because Abby averted her eyes and ignored the fact that her seventy year old husband was having sex with his 41 and 32 year old daughters, as well as the maid? I had no idea Andrew was such a sexual athlete, by the way!

Remember when the murders occurred, also. Not at a time when Andrew would presumably have been imposing himself on all these females, but after he'd been ill for two days and at a time when his brother in law was visiting.

Curryong wrote:Nobody can discount anything in this case, MysteryReader! However, if incest or rapes occurred to the daughters on a long-term basis, why was it that Abby was attacked and murdered first and received far more blows than Andrew?

I can't see her participating in the incest, ie physically holding her stepdaughters down, so how do we explain the discrepancy in the rage shown during the murders? Because Abby averted her eyes and ignored the fact that her seventy year old husband was having sex with his 41 and 32 year old daughters, as well as the maid? I had no idea Andrew was such a sexual athlete, by the way!

Remember when the murders occurred, also. Not at a time when Andrew would presumably have been imposing himself on all these females, but after he'd been ill for two days and at a time when his brother in law was visiting.

True but I believe that is the WHY of the murders. However, she could have had more blows because she knew about the incidents and didn't do anything. I don't know the WHO.

In domestic murders the 'who' is often connected to the 'why'. That's perhaps the reason the trespasser scenario has not really found favour among writers on the case. Instead authors have tended to put forward Bridget or family members as suspects.

Curryong wrote:In domestic murders the 'who' is often connected to the 'why'. That's perhaps the reason the trespasser scenario has not really found favour among writers on the case. Instead authors have tended to put forward Bridget or family members as suspects.

True. I never bought into the trespasser scenario. For my personal self, I know the WHY and the who, eh... I can never be sure of who but suspect.

Possibly the difference between damage done to Abby and Andrew could be because the killer worked out some of the rage on Abby. Also Andrew could have been less damaged because the killer was worried about being caught in the act. Either an intruder knowing he needed to get the hell out fast or Lizzie worried about Bridget or Uncle John bursting in. There was likely more control when Andrew was attacked because the killer didn't have the seclusion of an upstairs room with the door closed. If it was an intruder in the upstairs room, he could have felt some security in turning around and attacking anyone who came in. Perhaps the door was locked also. I have old Lizzie era locks in my house that lock with a tiny lever from inside. However it was upstairs, the killer didn't have the same level of security downstairs. Anyone could have entered the dining room or from the kitchen, and if the killer was an intruder he may or may not have known if anyone (Lizzie) could have entered the sitting room area from the front part of the house.

Lizzie especially would need to worry about Bridget not staying upstairs or Uncle John coming back, or possibly even someone coming to the back door to buy vinegar or something.

What would be interesting is if we could find a neighbor who would say that the main inside door to the back was closed about the time Andrew was killed. To my knowledge this isn't known. Surely, wouldn't Lizzie have closed the heavy door for extra privacy if she did the murder? It would certainly be distracting if Uncle John or someone was beating on the screen door, demanding to be let in while she was chopping her father. An intruder would welcome only a screen door to exit.

For many years I rejected the sexual component to the family dynamics. And while I am more open to the idea than I was a few weeks ago, my instinct still tells me there was none. I would be more willing to entertain it if it wasn't for the domestic help situation... 2 can keep a secret if one of them is dead-- and it doesn't jibe with Emma being sent away to school and Lizzie's grand tour. Yes, the family was secretive and locked doors, etc-- there were some weird elements in that house. It seems to me it borders more on paranoia, dislike, distrust, a house divided than it does on hiding such a disgusting secret. Those girls did stand up to Andrew. Demanding a property when he bought Abby one, Lizzie's trip, etc.

Also, if Emma was the one taking most of the abuse to protect Lizzie-- why would she move to the smaller room one had to pass through Lizzie's to get to? It would make more sense she stayed in the main room so Andrew didn't have to pass Lizzie to get to her.

Yes Anthony, I get the same feeling. A very odd, secretive family with dislike between the girls and the stepmother always bubbling away under the surface, and money supposedly an issue. A house divided, with the parents keeping any land transfers a secret in case arguments should blow up. (I do think that was why the Whitehead deal was kept from Lizzie and Emma). Eyes poring into papers in desks with forced locks. Not a happy atmosphere at all, and I don't blame Bridget a bit for wishing to move on.

I also agree about the bedroom situation, and, as Irina pointed out in a previous post, Andrew locking his bedroom door at night (if he did) hardly gels with a master manipulater of his family who can't keep his hands or other parts of his anatomy to himself.

I very much agree with what Anthony and Curryong have written. It might be more profitable to consider how money might have been used for manipulation. I have an idea Andrew, simply because it was his nature, may have used money to effect behaviour. Lizzie testified and also allegedly told friends she didn't know if she and Emma would have had anything from a will. This sort of thing engenders fear, perhaps even terror. (Keep in mind I have personal experience here though I am independent by nature. I don't have a problem to say, "Cram the money, I'll go live in my car.") Being a middle aged spinster in the Victorian age, faced with the possibility of being destitute, may have been enough to create mental instability. Perhaps Andrew played everyone off against everyone else and controlled behaviour against other family members' wills.

irina wrote:I very much agree with what Anthony and Curryong have written. It might be more profitable to consider how money might have been used for manipulation. I have an idea Andrew, simply because it was his nature, may have used money to effect behaviour. Lizzie testified and also allegedly told friends she didn't know if she and Emma would have had anything from a will. This sort of thing engenders fear, perhaps even terror. (Keep in mind I have personal experience here though I am independent by nature. I don't have a problem to say, "Cram the money, I'll go live in my car.") Being a middle aged spinster in the Victorian age, faced with the possibility of being destitute, may have been enough to create mental instability. Perhaps Andrew played everyone off against everyone else and controlled behaviour against other family members' wills.

I agree, those girls might have been put out on the street. They didn't do anything to endear themselves to Abby. Although I suspect she wouldn't left them twisting in the wind.

Like Anthony, I'm more open to the incest theory now than ever before although I always found it possible due to the clearly severe maladjustment of the family dynamic. It's the sort of home in which incest appears. Whether it was there or not, or whether it had ONCE been there and had ceased upon marriage to Abby, or did not involve both girls, these are tantalizing questions. They were strange; I think neighbors noted it. Angry dynamics come from somewhere - tyranny or abuse or addiction going on in the home.

1) Secretive
2) Largely closed to outsiders, little socializing
3) Obsession with locks, safety, paranoia (poisoning fears, refusal to see Bowen thinking he wanted money by Andrew when it was a courtesy call)
4) Control issues with money, but presumably other aspects (small allowances, Abby having to pay for curtains, etc)
5) Blatant dislike of other members (Emma, Lizzie v Abby at a minimum)
6) Refusal to take meals together by certain members
7) Odd rejection of modern conveniences given finances
8) Being called 'worse than insane' and having family history of oddness remarked upon by numerous others
9) Over-paying for household help (given maid's duties)
10) Father not especially liked by others, hard dealing in business, rumors of cheating during undertaker years
11) Maid uncomfortable by witnessed family dynamic
12) Daughter with kleptomania (indicative of mental problem)
13) Daughter that is hermit and rarely leaves (indicative of mental problem)
14) Destruction of pigeons to prevent theft rather than secure premises given lock obsession
15) Display of bedroom key to some unknown purpose
16) Grudge keeping as demonstrated by Andrew abandoning church
17) Father wearing daughter's school ring
18) Saving worthless items (picked up lock) for conceivable value (scarcity issues, fear of penury)
19) Rule bound (wearing paint stained dresses)
20) Disposal of urine and slop jar near living area by Andrew
21) Gossip about family - Abby and Lizzie telling the story of the daylight robbery, "she's a mean old thing" etc
22) Daylight robbery and refusal to pursue it, keeping story close
23) Getting rid of horses and modern conveyance of carriage
24) Bobo's letter from Grein family
25) Addressing parent by first name (Abby)
26) Maid not allowed on second floor
27) Problems with other extended family members (Hiram Harrington)

Those are just a few I can think of.

They were a strange family that is for sure, but that doesn't spell out incest to me. Andrew was a dogmatic and rigid personality and many of the things that you have noted emanated from him. We don't know what his family background was, though there are hints--Quaker forebears, simplicity, not much money, also a father who deeded him a property 'from affection'.

'Waste not, want not' was a prominent tenet in the Victorian period. Andrew's action in picking up the used lock would have been greatly admired by many people at that time. A lot of people mistrusted doctors, and relied on homespun remedies for their ills in Andrew's youth, and he was an oldfashioned man. There was a WC in the house. Andrew just couldn't be bothered to go down from the second floor to the cellar at night (no electric light, remember.) Hence the slop bucket.

The locks, the key business, the physical division of the house, seem to have dated from the time of the daylight robbery. Most men of influence in their local area would stop a police investigation into a robbery if it appeared their offspring was involved, I suspect.
The break-in wasn't hinted at to outsiders for a year. Andrew was getting older and he was the one who looked after the horse. He probably thought it wasn't worth it. He had horse-car tickets.

According to Bridget's interview Abby gave her one pay rise because she wanted Bridget to stay. As she had once told her, she would be lonely without her. Considering her relationship with her stepdaughters, that would have been perfectly true!

The Borden family's 'oddness' was only commented on by other townspeople when a reporter did a 'survey' around town on the subject after Lizzie's arrest. Probably any family would have got the same response if a member had been arrested in a high-profile murder investigation.

I agree with Phineas for exactly her reasons and also because these murders fit 'on point' with the forensic profile of a planned domestic homicide where some form of abuse occurred to fuel the rage evident from the crime scenes. I've posted these details before and redundancy can be one of my lesser attributes... so I won't do it again. This is an issue where we will agree to disagree, and no one will ever prove their point unless more correspondence turns up in an attic, a Bible or a locked file in a Boston Law Office.

What tolls the bell for me is the totality of the household dynamics plus the express brutality of the murders themselves and much of what preceded and some of what followed. Plus analysis by experts in the field of forensic crime analysis. Taken piece by piece, everything can be explained away as no more than slightly odd. Sort of like finding a huge jigsaw puzzle with pieces missing. Looking piece by piece we might see a hoof, fur, nostril, eye, parts of trees, bushes and a building, sky, grass, but no actual proof of what the subject of the picture really is. Put a few pieces together here and there and it still isn't clear. Put all the pieces together except those that are missing and we see the picture is most likely farm animals in a pasture with a horse in the forefront. To me, putting together everything we know about the Borden family and everything we know about the murders, plus everything we can learn from expert criminologists (forensic profiling IS a science based on empirical data) pretty much points the finger at Lizzie as the murderer and at Lizzie as either being witness to or victim of some sort of abuse in that household.

As for the idea that victims of abuse can just leave...well, that might be the correct action but it's rarely what really happens. Abuse by a parent or a spouse is very confusing for the victim. On one hand, they love their abuser and their abuser more than likely assures his victim of how much he loves them. Women on the receiving end of abuse want to believe that their lives will change for the better...that when he promises never again that he means never again. Often their lives are a complex juxtaposition between a black eye and a dozen red roses, a romantic dinner and broken ribs, a second honeymoon and a trip to the ER or the mortuary. They care caught in a cycle of extreme physical and emotional devaluation followed by extreme idealization with promises and gestures of love.

Somewhere along the way, life becomes no longer about escape but more about survival. He threatens to kill her or the children or himself if she ever leaves...because he loves her so much and can't live without her. I see this clinically, but I've never experienced it; and I'm always cautious about deciding what's easy for people to do or not do until walking a few miles in their shoes. I doubt that Lizzie or Emma could have left that household unless they married or their parents died.

It's not a lot different when the victims are children. Children are told how special they are, how important their relationship is to the abusing parent, how necessary it is to protect the parent by keeping the secret, how special they make the parent feel, that this is how Daddy shows he loves you, you make Daddy feel so good and what awful things will happen to the parent if the child tells. Often the chosen child is showered with special attention, little gifts, special hugs and kisses, loving attention alternating with threats of catastrophe (ie you girls might end up in an orphanage if anyone ever finds out).The cycle is really no different from domestic abuse except the child has no idea that not everyone lives this way. By the time they're old enough to perhaps understand this, the damage is done. They still love their abusing parent, and they also hate him. And they continue to expect all the special treatment (whatever money can buy) that they've already paid for with their physical and psychological well-being.

Of course there's no telling what might happen if that entitlement is channeled elsewhere, to a less worthy or hated step-parent. Doing so in secret would fuel the fires even more.


This is from Miami Children's Hospital:

A Matter of Personality
From borderline to narcissism

by David M. Allen, M.D.
One of the things that child abuse deniers like the False Memory Syndrome Foundation focus on, besides child abuse apologist Elizabeth Loftus's irrelevant arguments about the unreliability of memory (more on that at the end of the post), is the fact that many adults who claim to have been victims of incest as children did not tell any other adults about it at the time the alleged incidents took place.

Some children do tell. So why wouldn't the others?

May logical-sounding explanations have been advanced to explain why not. In an article in the December 2010 issue of Psychiatric Times, Richard Kluft lists several of them: incomprehension, shame, fear of retaliation, and the misperception that the child is to blame. He also mentions loyalty conflicts, but more on that shortly.

The statistics listed in this article, as unreliable as they may be, say that only 30 percent of incest victims reveal their situations, and most of the revealers are the older children and adolescents. In almost half of these cases, the revelation is accidental.

Some of those who do reveal suffer negative consequences, such as being blamed for "seducing" the perpetrator or being accused of lying. One study showed that 52 percent of those who reported mistreatment to a parent were still being abused a year after the disclosure.

Many perpetrators do indeed threaten the victim that if he or she tells, they might kill someone in the family. Sometimes they say that the authorities will come in and break up the family—not an unlikely scenario if the child is believed and the parent who is told actually reports the perpetrator. Other victims are told that no one will believe them.

All of these are excellent explanations for why the children remain silent. However, I think that the reason that is talked about the least may be the most important of all: family loyalty. Family loyalty as a major determinant of human behavior was focussed on in psychotherapy circles most notably by family systems therapy pioneer Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy. It is also highly consistent with the biological evolutionary concept of kin selection.

The strength of family loyalty was illustrated by a patient I saw who had been raised by a female relative rather than by her mother because the mother was a deadbeat parent. In an initial interview, the patient impulsively blurted out, for the very first time in her entire life, that the husband of this female relative had continuously molested her. She immediately burst into tears and could not stop crying for many minutes.

One might assume that memories of the abuse had come flooding back to her and that this was the reason for the emotional breakdown, but as it turned out, that was not it at all. The woman kept repeating, "I can't believe I told someone! I can't believe I told someone!"

After I calmed her down by swearing by all that was dear to me that the session was confidential and no one outside the room would ever have to know what she had revealed, she admitted that her biggest fear was that the woman who raised her would be irreparably hurt by the revelation that her husband had done what he had done. The patient could not bear the thought that this was what might happen. She owed the woman just too much.

As Boszormenyi-Nagy stated in his 1986 book, Between Give and Take: A Clinical Guide to Contextual Therapy, "Even very small children are sensitive barometers; they know when their parents are overburdened with anxiety, guilt and mistrust. Moreover, they want to do something about it." (p.35). If important relatives are dependent in some way on the perpetrator, children are naturally reluctant to create problems for those relationships.

Many victims of incest dissociate, or zone out, when memories of the abuse surface. Most therapists just assume that this takes place because the incest survivor is trying to avoid the pain associated with the memory. Undoubtedly this has something to do with it. However, I find that a much more important consideration with my patients is that they are following a family rule, and do not want to break it out of family loyalty.

When the abuse took place, they were told by the perpetrator in so many words, "This never happened." When the survivor starts to think about the fact that the incest did indeed happen, they dissociate so that the memories begin to either take on an unreal quality or seem to disappear altogether. Dissociating may be a way of preventing the sort of accidental revelation to others that took place as described with my patient above.

I believe that, in general, so called defense mechanisms like dissociation have more to do with avoiding violations of family rules than with controlling anxiety, as they are downright ineffective at the latter.

Family loyalty can be extremely powerful. Occasionally, as in the case of allegations made by the actress MacKenzie Phillips against her own father, "Papa" John Phillips (pictured above), incestuous sexual liaisons can even continue into adulthood. MacKenzie Phillips only went public after her father died.

Now of course it goes without saying that there are incidents in which false accusations of childhood sexual abuse are made by adults (I am leaving out the issue of young children. They can easily be coached to make stuff up in nasty custody battles, where false accusations are far more common, and will make up things to satisfy an overzealous social worker). Estimates are that about 5 percent of such accusations are not true. Of course, you have to ask, what kind of family behavior would induce a person to make such heinous false accusations against his or her own parent? I find that most incest victims minimize the trauma if anything.

But now back to Elizabeth Loftus. She correctly points out that memory fades with time, while all the time losing detail and accuracy as time goes by. Memories become increasingly vulnerable to “post-event information”—facts, ideas, inferences, and opinions that become available to a witness after an event is completely over. She conducted a study, for example, in which subjects watched a film of a robbery involving a shooting and were then exposed to a television account of the event that contained erroneous details.

When asked to recall what happened during the robbery, many subjects incorporated the erroneous details from the television report into their account. (Of course, many of the subjects did not do this). The erroneous details that were adopted by some of the experimental subjects were believed very strongly. These subjects typically resisted any suggestion that their richly detailed memories might have been incorrect or contaminated by the later information.

Of course memories fade and become less reliable over time. Of course memories of specific details of events can be wrong. Of course memories of events that are witnessed for the very first time are subject to observer biases, missed aspects of the events, and sensory information that is misinterpreted. However, the big picture is unlikely to be misremembered. None of the subjects in Loftus’s experiment confused the robbery they had witnessed on film with a film of someone taking an uneventful trip to the mall. One is highly unlikely to get being raped mixed up with having watched pornography on a computer.

Furthermore, the identification of people or things being remembered becomes more accurate the more familiar those elements are to the observer. That should not come as a surprise to anyone who has an IQ higher than that of a stalk of celery, but at least one academic actually wasted his time doing a study that proved it.

Crime victims whose assailants are strangers have only seen the assailant one time. Victims of incest, on the other hand, usually live or have lived with their attackers and have been exposed to them countless times. Furthermore, child abuse takes place in a location in which only certain individuals usually make an appearance.

If an assailant were a complete stranger to whom the victim had never been introduced—someone who is not supposed to be where he or she is—that fact would stand out rather conspicuously. It is extremely unlikely that someone being sexually abused would, for example, misidentify an intruder as her stepfather. She might not correctly remember what he was wearing at the time, how long it went on for, the precise chain of events, or even the dates that it happened, but those details are not especially important.

As for the idea that victims of abuse can just leave...well, that might be the correct action but it's rarely what really happens. Abuse by a parent or a spouse is very confusing for the victim. On one hand, they love their abuser and their abuser more than likely assures his victim of how much he loves them. Women on the receiving end of abuse want to believe that their lives will change for the better...that when he promises never again that he means never again. Often their lives are a complex juxtaposition between a black eye and a dozen red roses, a romantic dinner and broken ribs, a second honeymoon and a trip to the ER or the mortuary. They care caught in a cycle of extreme physical and emotional devaluation followed by extreme idealization with promises and gestures of love

From Debbie's post....

Victims struggle today to get out of abusive situations! And there were no programs/safe houses in 1892!!!

No, Anthony, I know there weren''t. However, again I repeat, there is no evidence that Andrew was an abuser of his daughters or of his servants, and all the studies from the 20th and 21st centuries or a few lines from a letter with a page missing does not change that fact.

I've immersed myself in 19th century diaries, letters, documents all my life from my teens and although, as I've said many times Andrew was very rigid and the household dynamics were extremely strained and strange, following the robbery, that still does not constitute evidence that the Borden daughters or servants were being abused. Several of Phineas's points are explainable by the rigid and stubborn nature of Andrew's personality.

As I said, I am used to 19th century life. The poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning was subject to enormous restrictions in her lifetime before she met Robert. She was treated as an absolute invalid by her father, forbidden to socialise, or to attend any kind of concerts, lectures or to travel. Her father virtually forbade her siblings, male and female, marriage. ELIZABETH was forced to elope at the age of forty in order to have any life.

Beatrix Potter, the Author of 'Peter Rabbit' and many others, had a mother who felt that her daughter should be quite content with her family life and her parents' friends. No social life was organised for her at all, and this went on until her thirties when she began to write. Even on her honeymoon in her middleage she had to go back to London to help choose a servant for her mother.

The poet Lord Tennyson's fiancé was forbidden to see him for years because it was her father's wish. They married when she was in her late thirties. Yet neither he nor Rupert Potter nor Edward Barrett were molesterers of their
daughters or servants. These were well-known people yet I also know of dozens and dozens of other examples in the middle classes. Adult children were subject to their parents' whims and edicts in a way that now would be completely unacceptable.

If we say that the fact that the Borden household rarely socialised and that is a sign of incest occurring, what about the Barretts where one dinner involving family friends was held in twenty years. Or Beatrix Potter, who had no friends but a few relatives and a governess at twenty six?

Okay, I said I wasn't going to post on this subject anymore but you have to admit it is a plausible theory because the murders were overkill. There was rage and passion and hatred behind those blows.

It is plausible and even possible considering some of the weirdness in that house, I just don't see it or am not willing to 100% accept it

Curryong wrote:Nobody can discount anything in this case, MysteryReader! However, if incest or rapes was inflicted upon the daughters on a long-term basis, why was it that Abby was attacked and murdered first and received far more blows than Andrew?

I can't see her participating in the incest, ie physically holding her stepdaughters down, so how do we explain the discrepancy in the rage shown during the murders? Because Abby averted her eyes and ignored the fact that her seventy year old husband was having sex with his 41 and 32 year old daughters, as well as the maid? I had no idea Andrew was such a sexual athlete, by the way!

Remember when the murders occurred, also. Not at a time when Andrew would presumably have been imposing himself on all these females, but after he'd been ill for two days and at a time when his brother in law was visiting.

Things are being taken out of context. No where was it stated (by me) "...incest or rapes was inflicted upon the daughters on a long term basis...". No where was it stated (by me) ".... that (her) seventy year old husband was having sex with his 41 and 32 year old daughters...".

No where did I imply that rape/incest happened right up to Aug. 3rd 1892.

How many times would rape/incest have to occur before someone commits murder? One, three, five? I don't know. Even IF it happened just once how long could a person go on, before things "boiled over"? I don't know.

I do know that when Sarah Welch worked there, in 1865, that Andrew was 42 yrs. old and Sarah was 21 yrs. old. I do know that in 1880, when Mary Grein worked there, that Andrew was 57 and Mary was 35. I don't believe Andrew was "impotent" at those ages.

As to why family members did not come to Sarah and Mary's rescue? Mary's family was in Ireland and Sarah's in England. It's not like "we'll just jump in the car and head over there". Also Mary never informed her family of the abuse until she returned to Ireland.

The Grein family states that Abby knew of the abuse. I don't know. Sometimes people will strike out more harshly towards some that could have helped but didn't, than they would the actual perpetrator. I don't know.

Yes to all the stories Curryong shared about famous people who escaped their unhappy homes. They survived and escaped. But none of their parents suffered a brutal slaying with a hatchet. It's the murder that causes you to back track. Taken by themselves, the oddities of the Borden household would have sunk into their respective ignominy with the deaths of all concerned. Taken against a backdrop of vicious hatchet murder, their complexion changes - and turns into something of a precursor. As Debbie says, pieces of a puzzle that's not clear. The details we obsess over are only unimportant if an intruder did the killings like Villisca, where there seems to be a certain randomness to the choice of victim; that is, they were not singled out due to their behavior that we know of.

If, more likely, the killings were precipitated by some grudge held against Andrew or Abby or both - and most murders are pointedly about the specific victim - then we have to work backward from the fact of murder and ask, who among those known to the Bordens would want or need to kill them so gruesomely? WHY where they victims? Murder is an ecosystem - there is a precipitating factor of dislike, slight, grudge, hatred, humiliation, gain or pain associated with the victim in the killer's mind. Eventually in the heat of anger or more coldly, premeditatedly, murder results. Unless we are dealing with a random killer, there MUST be an element in how the Bordens lived that led to their deaths. Not to say the killings were justified in any way - just that they angered the wrong person and that person stood to benefit by relief of anger, a feeling of justice, or some sort of material gain.

There's no evidence Andrew or Abby abused anyone. There's no evidence Lizzie killed them either. There's no evidence and at the same time, a bountiful feast of supplementary detail that viewed through the modern lens of psychology gives rise to a very reasonable theory that there was abuse in the home. And that one daughter reacted. As TaosJohn said somewhere, how many things are there that cause that level of reaction? Substance abuse, sexual abuse, physical abuse, psychological/emotional abuse. What else? The victim's reaction to the abuse belongs to him/her. It's not about the level of the abuse or whether we would term it 'severe' or 'moderate' or 'mild' if observing from the outside. It's how they internalize what's happening in the environment that makes it severe or mild. Some people are very resilient and remain function and unscathed, some exquisitely sensitive to the slightest oscillation in the household and might be damaged by behavior others find routine.

Something beyond mere money seems at work here. It always comes down to the rage and physicality of the killings. Lizzie was smart enough to poison them quietly without troubling a pharmacist; the chemicals available over the counter pre FDA would curl any poisoner's hair. If they just needed to be dead, there were far more suitable methods unless you were trying to stage a scene so incomprehensible, so over the top berserk that it would be impossible to conclude that a woman had done it. That would take a level of nerve and foresight. Far more likely in my mind is a sudden explosion and the availability of a weapon at hand. Once done, there was no going back and an hour and a half to gain composure and settle on a course, unpleasant maybe, but necessary, unavoidable to save Lizzie's very real skin. Abby was an accident, driven by some family dynamic caused by behaviors unknown but within a spectrum of abuse. Andrew was a necessity.

Curryong wrote:No, Anthony, I know there weren''t. However, again I repeat, there is no evidence that Andrew was an abuser of his daughters or of his servants, and all the studies from the 20th and 21st centuries or a few lines from a letter with a page missing does not change that fact.

I've immersed myself in 19th century diaries, letters, documents all my life from my teens and although, as I've said many times Andrew was very rigid and the household dynamics were extremely strained and strange, following the robbery, that still does not constitute evidence that the Borden daughters or servants were being abused. Several of Phineas's points are explainable by the rigid and stubborn nature of Andrew's personality.

As I said, I am used to 19th century life. The poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning was subject to enormous restrictions in her lifetime before she met Robert. She was treated as an absolute invalid by her father, forbidden to socialise, or to attend any kind of concerts, lectures or to travel. Her father virtually forbade her siblings, male and female, marriage. ELIZABETH was forced to elope at the age of forty in order to have any life.

Beatrix Potter, the Author of 'Peter Rabbit' and many others, had a mother who felt that her daughter should be quite content with her family life and her parents' friends. No social life was organised for her at all, and this went on until her thirties when she began to write. Even on her honeymoon in her middleage she had to go back to London to help choose a servant for her mother.

The poet Lord Tennyson's fiancé was forbidden to see him for years because it was her father's wish. They married when she was in her late thirties. Yet neither he nor Rupert Potter nor Edward Barrett were molesterers of their
daughters or servants. These were well-known people yet I also know of dozens and dozens of other examples in the middle classes. Adult children were subject to their parents' whims and edicts in a way that now would be completely unacceptable.

If we say that the fact that the Borden household rarely socialised and that is a sign of incest occurring, what about the Barretts where one dinner involving family friends was held in twenty years. Or Beatrix Potter, who had no friends but a few relatives and a governess at twenty six?

For lack of an English equivalent, I'm going to say it's the Gestalt of the Borden family dynamics plus the murders in situ plus what we now know about abuse in general and incest in particular plus huge advancements in forensic profiling that tip my scales...taken all together they are greater than the sum of their parts.

And like Anthony I don't 100% accept that incest or some other form of abuse occurred...nor do I 100% accept that the hatchet on Crowe's roof was the murder weapon (after all, it was claimed by someone else)... nor do I 100% accept that Lizzie was the perpetrator. But I think the likelihood is very high for all three.

Maybe the reason there is lesser concern about incest in the Potter, Dickinson and Tennyson families is the parental heads didn't end up on the wrong end of a hatchet.

No matter what one may or may not think Andrew did or did not do...this is interesting. The bolding is mine.


Incest


The taboo surrounding incest has existed for thousands of years, but its social impact has shifted over time, reflecting changing notions of children, law, SEXUALITY, and the family. The historian must exercise caution in interpreting the role of incest in the United States because rhetoric does not always reflect reality. People rarely spoke about child sexual abuse prior to the 1970s; nevertheless incest clearly occurred. Society's responses to allegations of incest reflect the changing and often ambiguous role of children in society and are shaped by notions of gender, race, socioeconomic status, and ethnicity.

Colonial America through the Nineteenth Century

In the colonial period, children were economic assets to the family and essentially under paternal control. Their economic function was eclipsed as Victorian concepts of middle-class domesticity emerged in the nineteenth century. Children were recast as innately innocent and malleable, and mothers replaced fathers as the moral guardians of the home. This image of innocence underscored the perception of childhood vulnerability. During the Progressive Era, CHILD-SAVING professionals increasingly intervened in the family, subtly challenging parental authority and implying that faulty and inadequate PARENTING could harm children. The twentieth century saw the emergence of CHILDREN'S RIGHTS, often at the expense of parental authority.

Although rarely mentioned, there is mounting evidence that child sexual abuse occurred frequently throughout the last two centuries. Laws about statutory rape and incest reflect awareness that child sexual abuse existed, but their erratic enforcement suggests ambiguity about sexual abuse and society's role in child protection. Between the 1880s and 1900, for example, most states increased the AGE OF CONSENT from ten to at least sixteen, reflecting a common concern of the social purity movement that girls were vulnerable to sexual harm. Although almost every state outlawed incest, sexual acts between parent and child outside of intercourse fell under less stringent legal statutes.

Historians have argued that cultural practices may have facilitated sexual abuse in the home. Sleeping arrangements that placed adults in the same bed with children–such as occurred in the crowded conditions of nineteenth-century tenements, or the limited bed space in colonial and frontier homes–gave adults easy access to children, enabled children to witness carnal acts between adults, and may have facilitated incest. Myths about VENEREAL DISEASE transmission may have contributed to sexual abuse by reshaping taboos against incest into acts of desperation. According to one myth, which still occasionally surfaces as an excuse, intercourse with a virgin will cure a man suffering from a venereal disease. During the nineteenth century, men who invoked this explanation for sexual relations with minors were considered less predatory and legally culpable.

Late Nineteen and Early Twentieth Century

During the Progressive Era the profession of social work was born; with it came increased scrutiny of the private lives of American families. When early social workers uncovered cases of incest, they frequently described the girls as seducers rather than victims. Considered sexually deviant, these girls risked incarceration in institutions for delinquent girls. Conversely, fathers who were named as perpetrators were rarely prosecuted; a promise to reform was considered sufficient. By the 1920s, children were often imbued with paradoxical qualities of being at once erotic and innocent, a tension epitomized in Nabokov's 1958 novel LOLITA.

Commonly held beliefs may have deflected suspicion away from parents. Victorian domestic literature frequently warned mothers to beware of salacious domestic workers caring for children. Accused of calming young charges by masturbating them and introducing sexual activity prematurely, domestic employees were often the first household members to be implicated when sexual abuse was suspected. Little evidence supports these accusations against nursery maids; yet the frequency with which the concern was raised reflects a simmering fear that sexual abuse could perturb the seemingly calm Victorian home. Similarly, when a child contracted gonorrhea and a parent was found to have the disease as well, infected sheets and toilet seats were blamed instead of the parent. The mistaken belief that children could catch gonorrhea from objects led sexual abuse to go unrecognized as late as the 1970s.

Historians have shown how twentieth-century rhetoric may have hidden more abuse than it exposed. The strangerperpetrator, so threateningly portrayed in mid-twentieth-century media, diverted attention from more likely perpetrators in the home. Freud's notion of children's innate sexuality and his belief that memories of sexual abuse represented unconscious wishes stressed the erotic nature of children and caused many professionals to question the validity of memories of sexual abuse. Even as concern about sexual abuse grew throughout most of the twentieth century, most experts resisted the idea that incest might be common.

CHILD ABUSE burst into American social conscience in the last three decades of the twentieth century, but there were important antecedents, though initially they were focused on physical rather than sexual abuse. Organized social response to child abuse began in 1874 when a severely beaten girl was brought to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and thus led to the founding of analogous societies to protect abused children. Her case typified nineteenth-century stereotypes: abused children came from immigrant, impoverished, intemperate, and marginalized homes. These stereotypes buttressed middle-class values, reinforced notions of middle-class domestic tranquility, and persisted for over a hundred years.

Other social movements helped set the stage for the late-twentieth-century discovery of incest. Feminism empowered women to expose domestic abuse and encouraged society to protect other victims, like abused children. The social activism of the 1960s and 1970s created a sympathetic audience for abused children. Increased sexual freedom gave society a vocabulary to discuss sexual abuse. In the early 1960s pediatricians, inspired by social activism and responding to increased professional interest in developmental and behavioral issues, began to identify and protect physically abused children. By the 1970s this medicalization of child abuse had expanded to include child sexual abuse as well, and medical evaluations became standard features of child sexual abuse cases. As society increasingly felt obliged to protect abused children, the paternal hegemony that dominated early American families had eroded and a variety of professionals gained authority in policing and protecting the family.


See also: Law, Children and the.


BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ashby, LeRoy. 1997. Endangered Children: Dependency, Neglect, and Abuse in American History. New York: Twayne Publishers.

Evans, Hughes. 2002. "The Discovery of Child Sexual Abuse in America." In Formative Years: Children's Health in the United States, 1880–2000, ed. Alexandra Minna Stern and Howard Markel. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Freedman, Estelle B. 1989. "'Uncontrolled Desires': The Response to the Sexual Psychopath, 1920–1960." In Passion and Power: Sexuality in History, ed. Kathy Peiss and Christina Simmons. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Gordon, Linda. 1986. "Incest and Resistance: Patterns of Father-Daughter Incest, 1880–1930." Social Problems 33: 253–267.

Gordon, Linda. 1988. Heroes of Their Own Lives: The Politics and History of Family Violence, Boston 1880–1960. New York: Penguin Books.

Gordon, Linda, and Paul O'Keefe. 1984. "Incest as a Form of Family Violence: Evidence from Historical Case Records." Journal of Marriage and the Family 46: 27–34.

Jenkins, Philip. 1998. Moral Panic: Changing Concepts of the Child Molester in Modern America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Mason, Mary Ann. 1994. From Father's Property to Children's Rights: The History of Child Custody in the United States. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Odem, Mary E. 1995. Delinquent Daughters: Protecting and Policing Adolescent Female Sexuality in the United States, 1885–1920. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Pleck, Elizabeth. 1987. Domestic Tyranny: The Making of American Social Policy against Family Violence from Colonial Times to the Present. New York: Oxford University Press.


HUGHES EVANS

Since the incest theory was raised again in the wake of the Grein letter(s) it seems to have become the main narrative of many threads. Because the Borden household appears to reflect an atmosphere in which incest could have occurred --- ergo, it has been leaped on as THE explanation. No, the heads of the families I mentioned didn't end up as murder victims, nor did the many other husbands and fathers I've studied over the years. If these men were abusers there is nothing that has come forward since their deaths to advance that theory. And it is the same with Andrew.

Many thousands of Victorian households lived very restrictive lives. Just like the Borden family. No, murders didn't occur there. Nor did incest, in the vast majority of cases. Nor did assault of servants.

Others on the Forum can of course believe that there was abuse and incest in the Borden household. I do not. I do not see it in the quotations posted by BOBO. Sorry, Tim, but they are ambiguous without Page 2 and needn't refer to abuse in no.92 at all.

Curryong makes a good point here. The entire forum is permeated by Incest and Rape...given the name of this thread maybe this is where that discussion should reside so those who aren't interested don't have to stumble upon it elsewhere unless the the segue is logical. This is coming from me, Felony I Violator of Off Topic Comments, so anyone who wishes to call me a hypocrite may do so now...and I will agree.

BOBO, I know you didn't state or infer those things you refer to, they are entirely my own interpretation of the incest theory and what went on to cause murder. I didn't mean to upset or annoy you in my post and if I did I'm truly sorry.

debbie, it's not that I hate the discourse about whether there was incest at the Borden household. We can argue about it till the cows come home and probably will! It's just that it seems to have spilled over lately and taken over in some threads.

Who is going to break the news to Franz that Lizzie DID do it, and the reason WHY, though the barn was not involved so far as we know?

Curryong wrote:BOBO, I know you didn't state or infer those things you refer to, they are entirely my own interpretation of the incest theory and what went on to cause murder. I didn't mean to upset or annoy you in my post and if I did I'm truly sorry.

debbie, it's not that I hate the discourse about whether there was incest at the Borden household. We can argue about it till the cows come home and probably will! It's just that it seems to have spilled over lately and taken over in some threads.

Who is going to break the news to Franz that Lizzie DID do it, and the reason WHY, though the barn was not involved so far as we know?

Not upset in any way. That was the reason I ask for PMs, and I have received numerous. I feel NO theory should tie up the entire forum, as this one seems to have done. My apologies. PMs welcomed. Tim

Agreeing with Curryong, while incest has always existed Victorian people were more repressed in general. Religion was taken seriously as was hell and damnation. Sexuality was repressed. With the idea of temperance~no alcohol~repression was the order of the day in all aspects of life.

If one looks at incest also as control instead of or in addition to sexual gratification, we could move out of the sexual area and question other ways Andrew may have controlled the family and kept everyone unstable. To me that is much more likely than that he was sexually inappropriate with the family.

The problem with the Grein letter(s) is I see no reason why the veiled hints couldn't cover a number of things including husband and wife battering each other, mental illness, epileptic convulsions, blasphemy, drinking, and many other things. I also feel the connexion to the A.J. Borden family of 92 Second is not proven in the letter. We can surmise but we cannot prove because it is not stated. If I remember correctly there was another A.J. Borden in the area at the time, even if this name was explicitly in the letter, lacking an address we would still be left guessing. The whole area was full of Bordens. While we can feel the letter refers to THE Bordens, it may well not. It could refer to other Bordens who were ill and in need of nursing services temporarily. Perhaps the things one shouldn't see were bratty children running out of control or conversely perhaps children cruelly punished. The door is wide open for interpretation.

irina wrote:If I remember correctly there was another A.J. Borden in the area at the time, even if this name was explicitly in the letter, lacking an address we would still be left guessing.

From the Fall River Daily Herald, reporting on the funeral:

Pallbearers included John H. Boone, businessman, Andrew J. Borden, Merchant Manufacturing Co. (same name as the deceased), Jerome Cook Borden, cousin, Richard A. Borden, prominent businessman, George W. Dean, businessman, Abraham Hart, treasurer of Union Savings Bank, and James Osborn, a member of the Central Congregational Church. For Abby Borden: Frank Almy, John Boone, Henry Buffinton, Simeon Chace, James Eddy and Henry Wells.

Incest really isn't my axe to grind although my over the top thinking about it didn't start with BOBO; I've had it on hold since who knows when. However, until recently discussion would peter out in the blink of an eye whenever the topic popped up. Now that it's moved to the front burner I'm on it like a bee to honey; however, can talk about it 'til the cows come home but donkeys will fly before we all agree... Hi Franz

I've had it on hold too, but it's always been a suspicion. Bobo's letter adds grist to that mill finally - and it's the first new thing in eons, so no wondering it's causing a lot of board talk. I think it refers to our Bordens because it was written when Mary Grein was still employed by the Bordens and unless Sarah also worked for a second Borden family she couldn't be expected to know that things go on that shouldn't be seen unless she was engaging in idle gossip. What is the chance that two separate Borden families would give a maid the willies and be seen as unwell? There is the matter of knowing what page 3 refers to without page 2, but the fact that the family found it important enough to copy the page that was destroyed and that its contents continue in their family lore says a lot. I would really like to see a scan of the letter copy however faint. To see the whole thing including anything off topic just to have the context.

I agree with Curryong that it does seem weird that Sarah would broach this when Mary had already been working there for several years. That's why we need the whole letter, not just a summary. I'd like to see it line by line.

phineas wrote:I've had it on hold too, but it's always been a suspicion. Bobo's letter adds grist to that mill finally - and it's the first new thing in eons, so no wondering it's causing a lot of board talk. I think it refers to our Bordens because it was written when Mary Grein was still employed by the Bordens and unless Sarah also worked for a second Borden family she couldn't be expected to know that things go on that shouldn't be seen unless she was engaging in idle gossip. What is the chance that two separate Borden families would give a maid the willies and be seen as unwell? There is the matter of knowing what page 3 refers to without page 2, but the fact that the family found it important enough to copy the page that was destroyed and that its contents continue in their family lore says a lot. I would really like to see a scan of the letter copy however faint. To see the whole thing including anything off topic just to have the context.

I agree with Curryong that it does seem weird that Sarah would broach this when Mary had already been working there for several years. That's why we need the whole letter, not just a summary. I'd like to see it line by line.

Me too!!!

Various members of the Grein family copied the Welch letter in its entirety, didn't they, BOBO? Any chance that a copy of the whole letter would survive in with a distant cousin, or someone? They can't all have destroyed or mislaid their copies, can they, say I, weeping at the lost clue?

Men back in that day OWNED te women in the house. They were allowed to beat them and have sex with them. ALL of them including the maid. It wasn't against the law back then. They just couldn't kill them. No doubt in my mind Andrew helped himself to whoever was within teach when the mood struck him. And Emma for sure took over Sarahs duties when she was sick and after she died.

Men back in that day OWNED the women in the house. They were allowed to beat them and have sex with them. ALL of them including the maid. It wasn't against the law back then. They just couldn't kill them. No doubt in my mind Andrew helped himself to whoever was within reach when the mood struck him. And Emma for sure took over Sarahs duties when she was sick and after she died.

However, we don't know if Andrew was that sort of man. We have no evidence that he sexually abused anyone including any servants that had worked there. I don't think it's entirely fair to assume that when the mood struck him he threw himself onto the first female that he encountered in the home.

I will say that Andrew was a staunch man, who seemed as though he enjoyed the control that the Victorian era afforded him (i.e., his control of the money, the lack of conveniences, selling of horses, killing of pigeons, reheating of mutton). We see from the fact that in later years Lizzie enjoyed the theater, as well as traveling and throwing parties, so this had to have been something that Andrew controlled while she was in his home. However, this could be due to his control of money and his old-fashioned ways. He allowed her to go on her 'grand tour'. If memory serves me right, Emma went away to school for a while. Would someone who was sexually abusing his daughter, allow the same daughter to go away to school?
Whether this control extended to the females in the home in regards to his sexual urges is open to conjecture.

Curryong wrote: ↑Mon Nov 10, 2014 6:55 pm Nobody can discount anything in this case, MysteryReader! However, if incest or rapes was inflicted upon the daughters on a long-term basis, why was it that Abby was attacked and murdered first and received far more blows than Andrew?

I can't see her participating in the incest, ie physically holding her stepdaughters down, so how do we explain the discrepancy in the rage shown during the murders? Because Abby averted her eyes and ignored the fact that her seventy year old husband was having sex with his 41 and 32 year old daughters, as well as the maid? I had no idea Andrew was such a sexual athlete, by the way!

Remember when the murders occurred, also. Not at a time when Andrew would presumably have been imposing himself on all these females, but after he'd been ill for two days and at a time when his brother in law was visiting.

Just running with this a bit, I am thinking that the reason Lizzie killed Abby first is if she had known Andy was doing this to everyone, she could have done something about it. If the rape/ incest occurred. May be Lizze tried to convince Abby to help her out and go to the authorities, but Abby wouldn't do it. Just really running with it. LOL!!

Oh one more thing to add, if this is the scenario. Maybe Abby didn't want to go the authorities with Lizzie about the rapes and incest is because Abby was thinking, "Well, this is my bread and butter, don't want mess this up and be out on my ear." Ok, II need to stop. My brain is running wild with this scenario!!

snokkums wrote: ↑Sun Oct 20, 2019 10:30 am ...
Just running with this a bit, I am thinking that the reason Lizzie killed Abby first is if she had known Andy was doing this to everyone, she could have done something about it. If the rape/ incest occurred. May be Lizze tried to convince Abby to help her out and go to the authorities, but Abby wouldn't do it. Just really running with it. LOL!!

Who is Andy?

I think he was married to Abigaily

Curryong wrote: ↑Mon Nov 10, 2014 6:55 pm Nobody can discount anything in this case, MysteryReader! However, if incest or rapes was inflicted upon the daughters on a long-term basis, why was it that Abby was attacked and murdered first and received far more blows than Andrew?

I can't see her participating in the incest, ie physically holding her stepdaughters down, so how do we explain the discrepancy in the rage shown during the murders? Because Abby averted her eyes and ignored the fact that her seventy year old husband was having sex with his 41 and 32 year old daughters, as well as the maid? I had no idea Andrew was such a sexual athlete, by the way!

Remember when the murders occurred, also. Not at a time when Andrew would presumably have been imposing himself on all these females, but after he'd been ill for two days and at a time when his brother in law was visiting.

I'm thinking that the reason why Abbey was killed first was that maybe Lizzie thought Abbey knew. She might have felt that Abbey should have done something

Interesting posts on this thread and gives a lot to think about, but I'd lean more to the rage of a lover (David Anthony comes to mind) from outside of the family rather than of someone who supposedly was being abused by a family member. And even if the story about the Grein letters were to be true, it seems from what we heard that the letters refer to abuse against servants and not toward Lizzie or Emma.

I’m brand new here so please forgive me if my posts are silly or misinformed.

I believe that incest is 100% possible simply because there was so much hatred behind the blows. I understand that money and inheritance could have been the only motive; but then why add so much aggression to the killings? It seems like overkill and so much hatred and passion went into the killings. It was a strange household in my opinion. You’d be surprised what goes on behind closed doors.

I was actually thinking of writing a fictional story about the scenario but I’m not sure. It might be laughed at or not well received.

If Andrew was a sexual predator as some have speculated, it is a bit surprising that he allowed locks to be placed on the bedroom doors. I can't imagine the sisters would be allowed to arrange for a carpenter to install the locks without Andrew's 'ok'.

Camgarsky4 this is an interesting point and I was not aware of it. However….locks can be easily manipulated. For example I have a lock on my bedroom door but my father says he can still get in with the key or whatever reason. But locks do make it more difficult but not impossible.

I just think there needs to be a reason the strikes were so many and so violent and hate driven. Lots of hate in the killings.

Or perhaps a frenzied release of action and energy after getting 'psyched up' to do the deed by an inexperienced 'butcher'. Once started, the blows continued until the assailant was totally spent and exhausted.

At least that is my viewpoint.

Oh boy, this was a wild ride.

This hoax BOBO started must have happened not long after I left. I got so excited thinking finally there was some new, important information about to be revealed, although it seemed strange BOBO refused to post it here and instead asked people to PM him.

I was very disappointed to learn it was all only a hoax.

BOBO, if you come back and read this, WHY did you do it? Also, shame on you! WTH.

Anyway, about incest, I've wondered if this was the case for a long time. I can't exclude it. The family was severely dysfunctional, and things ended with Abby and Andrew brutally murdered. They certainly looked like rage killings. More than could be easily explained by garden variety resentments built up over time, and wanting to dispatch them to inherit and live how the sisters wanted to live.

There was Andrew's always wearing the ring Lizzie gave him, which always bothered me because it feels very intimate. Possibly too intimate.

If it's true, it could shed a whole other light on Sarah's deathbed charging of Emma with taking care of Lizzie.

If it's true, there's no reason to assume Andrew continued to molest one or both into adulthood. In most cases of incest, it stops when the child becomes older.

But there is no definitive proof, so we'll probably never know for sure either way.