August 4, 1892

On this day in history Lizzie Borden's parents were found dead.

Lizzie Borden Took an Axe

Lizzie Borden took an axe,

And gave her mother forty whacks;

When she saw what she had done,

She gave her father forty-one.

Lizzie Borden

You've likely heard the old rhyme about the murders but who was Lizzie Borden? She was born on July 19, 1860. Her birth mother died when she was young and her father remarried Abby Gray who helped raise Lizzie and her sister. The sisters did not get along with their stepmother and the animosity continued into adulthood. They lived in Fall River, Massachusetts.

On August 4, 1892 Lizzie's parents, Andrew and Abby Borden, were found hacked to death in their home. Suspicion fell on Lizzie, 32, almost immediately because she was the only one home when the bodies were found, aside from their maid. She was arrested and charged with double homicide.

Trying a Murderer

The house where Lizzie Borden's family was killed.

The only evidence the prosecution had against Lizzie was circumstantial. They claimed she tried to buy poison the day before the murders and several days after them she burned a dress. The murder weapon, a hatchet, was found in the Bordens' basement. However, fingerprint testing was uncommon at the time in the United States (though commonplace in Europe). As a result the police refused to fingerprint the weapon. Since no blood was found on Lizzie and she was a well-bred Christian woman the all-male jury acquitted her, believing she was incapable of committing such a gruesome crime.

Lizzie inherited a substantial sum from her father's death and moved into a new home where she lived until she died in 1927. The house where the murders occurred is now a bed and breakfast.