Lizzie Borden took an axe
And gave her mother forty whacks.
And when she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.
+Lizzie Andrew Borden, born July 1860, was a New England spinster who was the central figure in the hatchet murders of her father and stepmother on August 4, 1892 in Fall River, Massachusetts, in the United States.
+Lizzie never dated; She is one of the two spinster daughters of Andrew Borden. She was well liked and active in civic and charitable work. She taught Sunday school at Central Congregational, was an officer of the Christian Endeavor Society, and member of the Women's Christian Temperance Union. Emma, her sister, 42, rarely went anywhere except to visit another nearby spinster, Alice Russell.
+Before the murders, she was allegedly refused the opportunity to purchase prussic acid by a local druggist, which she claimed was for cleaning a seal skin coat. Shortly before that fateful day, the entire household took violently ill. As Mr. Borden was not a popular man in town, Mrs. Borden feared they were being poisoned, but the family doctor diagnosed it as bad food.
+Thursday morning, August 4, 1892. Andrew Borden's body was found on the living room. It was on its right side on the sofa, feet still resting on the floor. His head was bent slightly to the right and his face had been cut by eleven blows. One eye had been cut in half and was protruding from his face, his nose had been severed. Most of the cuts were within a small area extending from the eye and nose to the ear. Blood was still seeping from the wounds. There were spots of blood on the floor, on the wall above the sofa and on a picture hanging on the wall. It appeared that he had been attacked from above and behind him as he slept.
+Upstairs, Dr. Bowen (also a neighbor), found that Mrs. Borden had been struck more than a dozen times, from the back. The autopsy later revealed that there had been nineteen blows. Her head had been crushed by the same hatchet or axe that had presumably killed Mr. Borden, with one misdirected blow striking the back of her scalp, almost at the neck. The blood on Mrs. Borden's body was dark and congealed.
+Mr. and Mrs. Borden had both been killed by blows from a hatchet, which in the case of Andrew Borden, not only crushed his skull but cleanly split his left eyeball.
+Lizzie was found not guilty on all three charges. The jury was earnestly thanked by the court, and dismissed.
+Lizzie died on June 1, 1927, at age 67, after a long illness from complications following gall bladder surgery. Emma died nine days later, as a result of a fall down the back stairs of her house in Newmarket. They were buried together in the family plot, along with a sister who had died in early childhood, their mother, their stepmother, and their headless father.
