On This Day in History: August 4

Lizzie Borden

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Lizzie Borden took an axe, and gave her mother 40 whacks. When she saw what she had done, she gave her father 41. They fuckin’ taught that rhyme to kids. I learned it when I was five and it freaked the shit out of me. What kind of sick fucks ...? Anyway, yeah. Lizzie did that shit, and she got away with it too. 

--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: August 4, 1892--

Lizzie was born in 1860, and her biological mother died when Lizzie was only three. Three years after that her father, a wealthy businessman in Fall River, Massachusetts, married Abby. Lizzie was no fan of her stepmother, believing she’d married her father for his money. Her dad, Andrew Borden, despite being rich as fuck (he was worth the equivalent of $9 million at his death) was a cheapskate. 

Lizzie, who was 32 at the time of the murders and still living at home, was all, the fuck, Dad? You’re rich as fuck. Why are we living in this shit neighborhood with all these dirty Catholic immigrants? We could live in a rich neighborhood and have one of them fancy indoor poopin’ toilets. 

Anyway, it wasn’t 40 whacks, and it wasn’t an axe. It was a hatchet. On August 4, 1892, Abby got 19 hits with the hatchet, followed by Dad getting 10 in the face. It happened in broad daylight, and no one heard a thing. Lizzie was all oh my goodness gracious someone has committed murder most hatchety! No one suspected Lizzie at first, because how could this well-bred Sunday school teacher commit such a heinous crime? There were foreigners living nearby. One of them did it! Let’s arrest this dude for the crime of being a Portuguese immigrant!

There was no apparent motive. No robbery or rape, just murder. And Lizzie’s statements to police were all over the fucking place. The murders split the town just like her father’s head. The rich were all no fucking way she did it, and the poor immigrants were like she’s guilty as fuck stop blaming us. 

Lizzie was arrested a week after the hatchet-o-rama and spent nine months in jail leading up to and during her trial. Women’s groups said she was being railroaded, and being that she had dead-daddy money she got the best legal defense available. There was a heap of evidence that she did it, including testimony from a close friend that she witnessed Lizzie burning a blood-soaked dress in the stove the day after the murders. But she was acquitted on June of 1893 and the courtroom erupted in cheers. Lizzie and her sister took the dead-daddy money and bought a nice house on the hill with a fancy indoor poopin’ toilet. She was shunned and often harassed, yet chose to stay in Fall River, despite having the money to move anywhere she liked. Lizzie died in 1927 at the age of 66 and was buried in the family plot next to her father. 

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