Review: Lizzie Borden
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 06 2, 2014
Victoria Lincoln wrote A Private Disgrace: Lizzie Borden by Daylight in 1967. As a native of Fall River, Massachutes, Lizzie's hometown and scene of the horrific 1893 murders of Andrew and Abby Borden, she grew up fascinated by Lizzie's story. Her research was slow and inhibited by Fall River's ongoing shame at it's grisly notoriety. Over one hundred years later public opinion is still divided over MsBorden's guilt or innocence.As Miss Lincoln hails from Fall River, she does offer unique insight into the psyche of Fall River and it's residents, thus also giving the reader a glimpse into the mindset of Andrew, Lizzie and Emma Borden. Fall River in the 1890's was a textile town whose distinctions in class were still sharply divided into the "haves" and "have nots", where Irish immigrants were third class citizens at best and the town was divided by old money and the citizens who worked for them.Andrew Borden was a self made man who began his climb to fortune as a second rate undertaker, parlaying his earnings into a slum lord, property owner and banker. At the time of his death his net worth was close to half a million 1893 dollars.His first marriage to Alice Morse ended with her death when Lizzie was 2 and Emma 12. A third daughter, Alice (born when Emma was 5) did not survive past her 2nd birthday.Whether because he felt his daughters' needed a mother, he married the hapless Abby several years after Alice death. Abby had a predilection to overrating and what would now be considered agoraphobia. Consequently, she was not well known in Fall River.  From the start Emma and Lizzie resented her and their relationship was not close.  However, their hatred for poor Abby did not start until much later when a seemingly benign real estate transfer whereby he purchased Abby's mother small house and titled it to Abby, did the sisters explode. Even Andrew's subsequent purchase of a home (used for rental income) for Lizzie and Emma to split did not appease the sisters.Needless to say, the Borden home was a house divided with Andrew and Abby vs the spinster sisters. It should be noted that while a miser himself, Andrew was extremely generous with both his daughters.Regardless tensions in the home on 2nd Street ran deep.  At the same time, Lizzie suffered from a form of epilepsy usually around the time of her menstrual periods. Great pains were taken by Andrew and Emma to keep Lizzie calm, happy, but Lincoln stresses Lizzie's epilepsy and "brownouts" in the book.Lincoln delved thru long lost court and inquest testimony and transcripts. While the book can be tedious and repetitive, ultimately Lincoln's conclusions are well thought out and she reconstructs a plausible explanation as to how the murders of August 4, 1893 were commited in broad daylight and an even more sensible explanation as to why Miss Borden got away with a double homicide.