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Lizzie’s Deli
Back in the early 1990’s there was a popular deli on Third Street called “Lizzie’s” which featured Victorian decor and lace curtains at the windows. The building itself is charming and after the deli closed down, the building retained the name and is now called The Lizzie Building. A favorite quip by deli waitresses was “Want the Lizzieburger? Hamburger rare with lots of ketchup!”
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What Fall River is Famous For
Some cars race down Third Street without ever stopping to peruse the brightly-colored mural which has graced the side of this brick building for many years. The smokestacks and mills reflect the history of the city, but it is the hatchet which captures the most attention. Like it or not, it’s Lizzie and those unsolved murders of 1892 which bring many tourists to this part of town. Could the artist also be giving us the motive?
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The sad end of Officer Medley
Fall River’s First Chief of Police William H. Medley 1915
(courtesy of the Fall River Police Department)
William H. Medley was among the first wave of patrolmen to arrive at #92 on the day of the murders. He heard Lizzie’s tale of being out in the hayloft for a long interval and went out himself to check out her story.
“I stooped down low to see if I could discern any marks on the floor of the barn having been made there. I didn’t see any, and I reached out my hand to see if I could make an impression on the floor of the barn, and I did by putting my hand down so fashion, and found that I made an impression”
(Sullivan, 119-120).Officer Medley’s attention to detail and powers of observation took him far. He became assistant City Marshal in 1910 and replaced City Marshal Fleet (also present at the Borden’s on August 4, 1892)when he retired in 1910. The title changed to Chief of Police in 1915 and Chief Medley held the title until his tragic death in 1917 as a result of a car collision at the corner of Locust and Linden Streets where Chief Medley sustained fatal injuries. His wife and daughter were in the car but survived the collision. Chief Medley was buried in Lowell, Massachusetts.
Below: The scene of the accident as it is today, Linden and Locust intersection.
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Gargoyles on Rock Street
It’s no wonder Lizzie Borden wanted to belong to the stylish Central Congregational Church at 100 Rock Street. Many of the fine mill owner families from The Hill were congregants there. Listed today on the National Register, the granite, Nova Scotia freestone and red brick edifice was designed by Hartwell and Swazey (also architects of the Academy Building) in the Ruskinian Gothic Style, in 1872. It is the only church in Fall River which features gargoyles on its exterior facades.
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Channel 5 Boston Interviews
http://www.thebostonchannel.com/news/15310981/detail.html
The link for the interviews and film footage from Friday, February 15 can be found above. Some footage of the Second Street house, a live interview with Borden case author, Leonard Rebello, and an audio interview with Hatchet editor, Stefani Koorey are featured.
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New Lizzie Image Makes a Splash!
All across the region today newspapers and television stations were buzzing with the news of the great find in Swansea. Providence Channels 10 and 12 carried the story as well as FOX 25 and Boston Channel 5. It was the talk at the corner Walgreen’s and over breakfast counters around Fall River this morning. Yesterday’s Herald News devoted three-quarters of the front page to the story and the Boston Globe ran it today on section B front page. Now how can they top this one!?? Click on thumbnails for larger image.
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Lizzie Borden front page news again at the Herald
This morning’s Fall River Herald News has a great article about the recent discovery of the young Lizzie photo and other finds at the Luther’s Corner Museum. Click on the link to read all about it.
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Leg O’ Mutton Madness
The popular gigot, or leg o’ mutton sleeves continued to grow in size from 1890 until they reached ridiculous proportions by 1898. After reaching gargantuan dimensions, there was nowhere to go but down- and they did. The new Edwardian era changed the emphasis entirely from huge sleeve, hourglass figure, and wide -bottomed skirts to a slim silhouette, monobosom, the “S” shaped curved silhouette and by 1911, a pencil slim hobble skirt which barely allowed a lady room to walk at the bottom. All of that was topped off by monstrous cartwheel hats which were recently glorified in the Cameron film, Titanic.
An advertisement for starch, 1898, the leg o’muttons last gasp
(blogger’s collection)
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1890’s Fashionplates
Fresh from the McDowell Dress Cutting Academy Journal in New York- Summer fashions for the seaside. This could have been Emma Borden and her friend Helen Brownell at Fairhaven shore, dressed in some serious leg o’ mutton sleeves.
(From the blogger’s collection)
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New Lizzie Borden Photo found in Swansea !
HOLY COW!!!It’s been a long, long time since a new photo of Lizzie has been published and the cover of the newly released Hatchet must qualify as a Stop the Press spectacular! Kudos to Hatchet editor Stefani Koorey and Borden historian Leonard Rebello for some great detecting. Other Borden photos and mementos were also located at the Swansea Museum just before Christmas 2007. It’s big news in Borden land tonight! For a subscription and a look at the cover, visit the link below. The Hatchet has also changed its title and content scope to include Victoriana , mystery and murder.
http://lizzieandrewborden.com/MondoLizzie/
The image of Lizzie at about nine years of age in a charming straw hat has been published with the permission and knowledge of the Swansea Historical Society on the site above. Internet copyright laws do apply and the permission to copy in the current issue of The Hatchet, and on The Hatchet-linked blog , Mondo Lizzie Borden, was obtained for one-time usage legally by the editor.
Any cropped, altered, or grayscaled “bootleg” reproductions which may appear elsewhere and are being circulated, are without the knowledge or permission of the Swansea Historical Society and have been cropped from the copyrighted cover of the latest edition of The Hatchet. For those who object to their personal photos appearing without permission on the Internet: propagating, harvesting, and disseminating copyrighted images amounts, in essence, to image theft. Any benefit which might have been afforded the institution to which the image belongs through print and product reproduction is compromised. Sadly, historical societies and museums are those institutions which most need the revenue.
Some worthwhile reading – http://mason.gmu.edu/~montecin/copyright-internet.htm
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Postcards from the Past
Old Fall River can still be found in the happily inexpensive postcard collectible. There was scarcely an important building, monument, park, or street scene which evaded the camera’s lens. Many of the cards were printed in Germany and Britain, and some are extraordinary testimony to the lithographer’s skill. Along with the usual city edifices and scenes, the New Year’s postal, featuring famous city sights and sites framed within the new calendar year, the homemade glitter cards, and cards promoting a city by name are desirable to collect. Most can be easily procured in the $4-$8 range. The candid shots of street life, featuring average citizens can give a real feel for the era and details of clothing, architecture and landmarks of the place and time.
New Year’s Greeting
Customized “glittercard”
Visitor’s souvenir postal for “The Folks Back Home”
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Dressing Up History
Over the years since 1991, it has been fun to re-live the 1890’s and to re-enact history as part of the cast at the Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast. Every August 4th there is a new script and new faces to fill the roles. Before the house was open to the public in 1996, some of us had fun dressing up and giving performances and carriage tours around the city. In 1992 the city put on an impressive effort to mark the centennial of the Borden case with Maplecroft open, plays, a Victorian Cafe, city exhibits and a conference at the local Bristol Community College. 1992 may never be equalled. The Second Street Irregulars, a group of armchair sleuths, evolved from the conference as friends were made there who wanted to continue to meet when the centennial ended. Today the group is going strong again, and meets twice a year to discuss aspects of the case and visit places pertaining to the Borden family and the crime.
Finding costumes for the past 16 years has been a challenge, but thanks to Butterick and Simplicity patterns, and a new company called Recollections, (see link) dressing the part has become easier.
Thankfully costumes for the men are not as difficult, and for many years the part of Andrew Borden has been played by Borden scholar Ed Thibault who has made Lizzie the subject of interest for over 30 years and has worn a black frock coat to great effect! There’s nothing quite like time traveling in a costume with friends who share the same interests with matching enthusiasm.
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1995 Second Street opens its doors
It is wonderful to revisit the first days of the the Lizzie Borden B&B via Youtube, only weeks after it opened on August 4, 1995. All of the original staff are there including George Quigley, brother of present cook, Dave Quigley, owners Ron Evans and Martha McGinn, and day manager Rochelle Pettenuti who painted the portraits of the Borden clan which still hang in the rooms on the second and third floor. It was Ron Evans who had the vision and passion to open the house to the public as a museum and bed and breakfast. Sadly, he lived only a very short time afterward and would not know how very successful his dream would become. The house had just been repainted in a tan and brown color scheme, and furnished as closely as possible to the house as it was in 1892.
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Centennial Memorabilia
There’s nothing that quite equals the 100th anniversary of any sort of event, and Fall River made a grand effort to tastefully recall the 100th anniversary of the famous Borden case. TheLizzie Borden Conference team at BCC, and the city-wide affiliates could see it was clear that something was expected by those living in the area to mark the 100th year following the Crime of the Century in 1892. The historical society produced a boxed stationery set with numbered letterhead and envelopes, and served as a location for the postal service’s special postmark cachet for envelopes. Perhaps the biggest seller at the historical society was the Centennial calendar in black and white on heavy cream stock. It has become highly collectible and occasionally appears on EBAY.
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FAQs at #92
Two questions often asked by visitors at the Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast are: 1. Is there anything original left in the house? 2. Why is there a broken plate hanging on the diningroom wall?
The Borden sisters retained ownership of #92 Second Street until it was sold in 1918. How much of the original furniture was taken with them to Maplecroft in 1893, how much was put into storage, and what was left in the house is unknown. Anything which was stored is rumored to have been lost in a flood during a storm. There is nothing original left today. The Glenwood woodstove is a favorite item in the house and must be very like the one in which Lizzie burned that famous Bedford Cord dress on the day after the funeral of her father and stepmother and on which Bridget cooked the equally famous mutton for breakfast. This old woodstove was found rusting away in a field in Vermont and was refurbished and piped for gas in 1995.
The white ironstone plate in a shadowbox in the diningroom was retrieved from the ground when the barn was rebuilt a couple of years ago. The location was in the backyard northeast corner of the lot where the barn privy had been located. What could not be burned was buried or tossed into the outhouse or privy vault. Many items of metal and glass and transferware plate fragments were found, including a broken doll commonly called a “Frozen Charlotte.” Lizzie was 12 when the Bordens moved into Second Street, but it is still fun to think it may have been hers.
The Bordens used a practical white ironstone for daily use and this was on the diningroom table at the time of the murders in readiness for the noonday meal which never took place. Many fragments of white ironstone crockery were found in the privy excavation including this plate, which may have been from the Borden’s cupboard.
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Bloody Versicle #1
Over the decades since the murders of Abby and Andrew Borden, many have set their theories and ideas about the family and their relationships to music and verse. Here is one more offering, by this blogger to add to the effort!
Ode to Domestic Harmony
It was the day of the murder and all through the house,
Tension mounted twixt Lizzie and Andy’s plump spouse.
Emma, in Fairhaven, with Brownells in their nest,
Closed weary eyes and longed for some rest.
With heavy feet dragging, Bridget downward did trod,
Doing as she was told with one tired, resigned nod.
Seizing bucket and pole out the doorway she clattered,
Got sick in the yard, but what did that matter?
Spying a friend standing close to the fence,
She sauntered right over without much of a wrench.
Chatting and smiling in the warm August sun,
It sure beat the washing and was surely more fun.
Uncle Morse had departed, so peculiar and thin,
To visit the Emerys and their visiting kin.
While no one would say that he was a glutton,
He thought “Oh, Dear Lord, please no more mutton!”
Andrew had left to count all his money,
Lizzie was quiet, and he thought that was” funny”.
He sighed as he walked to the banks just downstreet,
And felt faintly ill, “It must be the heat”.
Abby trudged on upward with her clumps of false hair,
And hitched up her skirts as she mounted the stair.
Already defeated and without a friend,
She looked up to Heaven thinking “How will it end?”
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The End of an Era
The Funeral of Queen Victoria 1901 (shown in Youtube segment below)
The death of England’s beloved Widowed Queen marked more than the end of an era. The Victorian period in history was not only the reign of one monarch, but a way of thinking, a code of morality and behavior and social expectations which affected every particle of social custom and culture. Her son, Edward VII would be a pale shadow of his mother in his brief reign of barely a decade following Victoria’s death. King Bertie’s reign would be filled with court scandal involving the King’s many paramours – which no doubt the old Queen would have found “unamusing”. Bertie is show below with his favorite wirehaired fox terrier, Caesar. The little dog marched behind his master’s coffin in the funeral procession in May of 1910.
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Website “Lizzie Borden Live”- goes live!
A new website has gone up on the web today promoting LIZZIE BORDEN LIVE, a one-woman show, written and performed by Jill Dalton, directed by Jack McCullough with incidental music by Larry Hochman. It is set in 1905, Fall River, MA, thirteen years after the unsolved murders of Andrew Borden. It’s a good-looking, user-friendly site, with notes about the actress, production and performance schedule. Don’t forget to click on the My Space link which features some intriguing slide shows of Maplecroft exteriors and Oak Grove Cemetery.
http://www.lizziebordenlive.com/
Abby and Lizzie on the front stairs at Second Street
Shelley Dziedzic and Jill Dalton
photo by Richard Behrens
