Why didn't Lizzie travel or live somewhere else.

[snokkums]

I have always wondered about this. After the trial, why didn't Lizzie do any traveling? I have never heard of her doing any of that after the trial. Or better yet, have another residence somewhere else and live there part of the year. I mean, you've got to figure that after the trial, no one wanted anything to do with her. Even if they did support her through the trial, she was still an accused murderer. Just always wondered why she stayed in town.

[Albanyguy]

She did take short trips to Boston and New York (mainly Boston) where she enjoyed the theater and shopping. I believe she also made occasional visits to vacation resorts in New England, but I'm not sure about that. It was on her trips out of town that she met and cultivated a friendship with Nance O'Neil. It must have been a relief for her to wander the streets and public places of a big city without people staring and pointing, to be just another face in the crowd.

I've always wondered why she didn't travel more extensively. She apparently loved her grand tour of Europe before the murders and I'm very surprised she never went back. She had the time and the money to go anywhere she pleased.

I think that the main reason she never left Fall River for even part of each year was sheer stubborness: "I was born here and my family has been here for two hundred years. I am part of Fall River and I'll be dammed if I ever let them drive me out. They can gossip about me and give the cold shoulder, but I'll show them that I'm tougher than they are." I also wonder if she didn't secretly hope that if she waited long enough, people would begin to forget the past, her social ostracism would fade away and she might eventually be accepted by her neighbors on the Hill.

[mbhenty]

Yes:

Many of us assume that Lizzie never went anywhere, but the truth is she travel extensively. And those are the ones we heard about. Being a private person it is not possible to know everywhere she went.

It is well known that Lizzie visited Chicago in 1893 and attended the Colombian Exposition. So, if she was acquitted in June, in less than 6 months she was in Chicago, sightseeing.

Also, she did frequent jaunts to Washington, D.C. This too is well reported.

Then there is the little story about Lizzie Borden Traveling across Canada. This you can find in a book published in 1949, written by some fellow named Carl Glick, with the title I'M A BUSYBODY. It sits in my library and is a personal memoir of the gentlemen's life. In it he tells a story about meeting Lizzie Borden when he was a little boy, as he traveled with his parents, a couple from Iowa.

Thus, we know what we know about her, and what we don't could be very extensive.

And, as far as moving out of the area, there was no place she could go where she would not be hounded or despised, so why not stay home. There would always be those who would fear and detest her. Besides, her family roots were deep here in fall river. And if she choose to get on a train and travel the country privately, how would we discover it.

Take the account of the Glick family above. When Carl Glicks mother found out that she was traveling in the same car as Lizzie Borden, she insisted that her husband make other accommodations. I hear that this account was written into Parallel Lives.

[Yooper]

If Lizzie had moved away from Fall River permanently she might have become a bit of a sideshow. The Borden name didn't mean much outside of the Fall River area so any implied respectability due to the name would have been lacking. That would tend to make Lizzie a curiosity and not much more. I realize she was ostracized while she remained in Fall River, but it wasn't anything more than that. That may be partly out of respect for the Borden name. If Lizzie had moved away, perhaps people would have been less inhibited and possibly downright antagonistic toward her. Just the act of moving away could make her appear guilty in the minds of some people.

[LizbethTurner]

I think that after the "not guilty" verdict Lizzie did exactly as she'd always wanted to do. She moved to the part of town she wanted to live in, in the kind of house she felt she deserved, traveled just as much as she pleased, and associated with anyone who took her fancy. After-trial Lizzie reveals herself, IMO, as a person who either has a thicker skin than a rhino, or who honestly believed that a verdict of "not guilty" meant she was innocent. In any case it's obvious the opinions of the town didn't mean much to her.

[snokkums]

I never looked at it the all of you are looking at the situations. and you all made some very good points. I mean, why move? She probably thought, "Well, this is my town too, you know", traveled when and where she wanted to. And I think too she had a very tough, strong nature that no one ever gave her credit for, until Lzibeth.

[augusta]

She travelled after the murders. She had a lot of friends, too.

Helen Leighton, founder of the Fall River Animal Rescue League, gave an interview to the Fall River Herald after Lizzie's death. In part it reads:

"Miss Borden was bitterly unhappy. Tragedy and sorrow ever overshadowed her. Only on rare occassions did she lay aside the sorrows. These happy and gay moments usually seem to come when she was away from Fall River. When with her in Boston or Washington, there were occasions when Miss Borden seemed really carefree.

"But these moments of happiness were fleeting. Much of the time she was desperately unhappy and she had days of most terrible depression. I know that in later years she questioned the wisdom of having remained in Fall River. She established her home here on the advice of friends, who told her it would appear as if she were running away if she went elsewhere to live. This seemed wise to her at first, but in after years she wondered if it would not have been better had she settled in another place. She felt that every time she stirred from her house that she was a marked woman and it cut her to the heart to be shunned by people.

"She never went into a store in Fall River; the bank was one of the few places she went and she avoided appearing in public. I understand that during her earlier years she used to go to Boston and stay at the Bellevue but during recent years she was more in the habit of making day trips to Boston. She came up frequently to attend the theatre and I often went with her. Her enjoyment of the theatre was one of the greatest pleasures which life afforded her. How she loved to see a good play!

"While Miss Borden led a most unhappy life, she did not lack for a number of warm, staunch friends. She was not as friendless as she has been described. She had at least a dozen devoted friends who did all they could to cheer and brighten her life ...

" Miss Borden had a number of callers and she occassionally entertained at dinner or luncheon. She rarely had house guests." ... (Source: "The Lizzie Borden Sourcebook", page 340.)

Nance O'Neil said that one of the friends Lizzie had was Mrs. Mary A. Livermore. Besides being famous in her own right, Mrs. Livermore was a friend of Lizzie's biological mother. (Source: "The Lizzie Borden Sourcebook," page 346.)

The Fall River Globe reported that a nameless friend "... said to Miss Borden that since Fall River had turned against her, she ought to pull up stakes and go to a new community and there make her home and her career, with the abundant financial resources which were hers. Miss Borden replied that she would never do so. She had one great ambition in life, which she set forth as follows, according to this veracious informant: "When the truth comes out about this murder, I want to be living here so I can walk down town and meet those of my old friends who have been cutting me all these years."
(Source: "The Lizzie Borden Sourcebook," page 346.)

There is a sizable article on Lizzie's second cousin, Grace Hartley Howe, in an old Lizzie Borden Quarterly that I think quotes Grace as also telling of Lizzie having a lot of friends after 1893.