Those silly kids....

[BOBO]

This from The News-Herald. ( Hillsboro, Highland Co., Ohio) Feb. 15, 1894..... "A Boston lady who brings up her children very carefully, and never allows them to see a newspaper, found them, on going into her nursery the other day, singing: "Lizzie Borden took an ax, and gave her mother twenty whacks; after seeing what she had done, she gave her father twenty-one".
This is the earliest reference I have found to this rhyme. In 120 yrs. we have added 20 whacks! The rhyme seems to have come out shortly after the murders/trial.

[twinsrwe]

Well, I'll be darned! Great find Bobo!!!

It's interesting that over the years, 20 more whacks were added to both mother and father.

[Curryong]

I haven't read Lincoln for a while but I'm sure it was she who stated that children around the neighbourhood of Maplethorpe would chant a version of the song when Lizzie was alive. Wonder what her reaction to hearing it would be, (if she did?) Was it a skipping song/chant at one time?

[BOBO]

It seems like a good rhyme to skip rope to. I don't think parents back then would allow their children to chant it in Lizzies presence, but who knows. Lizzie would have HAD to hear it though. Was she thinking "Where's that darn hatchet"? LOL

[Curryong]

It's strange that Lizzie and her trial should spawn a children's rhyme that has lasted through the years though, isn't it, especially when you consider all the famous homicides there were in the 19th and 20th centuries? There isn't even one about Jack the Ripper (arguably the best-known killer of all) that has survived in popular culture, though there was a lot of doggerel around at the time. Lizzie's rhyme is unique. I don't know of any other nursery rhymes/ skipping chants that refer to a real-life murder.

[PossumPie]

It's strange that Lizzie and her trial should spawn a children's rhyme that has lasted through the years though, isn't it, especially when you consider all the famous homicides there were in the 19th and 20th centuries? There isn't even one about Jack the Ripper (arguably the best-known killer of all) that has survived in popular culture, though there was a lot of doggerel around at the time. Lizzie's rhyme is unique. I don't know of any other nursery rhymes/ skipping chants that refer to a real-life murder.

No, but "Ring around the rosey" is about the Bubonic Plague...dark humor for kids.

[Curryong]

Yes, and don't forget the notorious case of the three blind mice, disabled and no doubt hanging about together for protection, (minus any seeing-eye guide dogs), who were all viciously assaulted by the farmer's wife, though her weapon was a carving knife not a hatchet!