Publication Date
1-1-2007
Document Type
Paper
Abstract
"Lizzie Borden took an axe, and gave her mother forty whacks. When she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one." Actually the Bordens received only 29 whacks, not the 81 suggested by the famous ditty, but the popularity of the poem is a testament to the public's fascination with the 1893 murder trial of Lizzie Borden. The source of that fascination might lie in the almost unimaginably brutal nature of the crime - given the sex, background, and age of the defendant - or in the jury's acquittal of Lizzie in the face of prosecution evidence that most historians today find compelling.
Publication Title
Famous Trials
Recommended Citation
Douglas O. Linder,
The Trial of Lizzie Borden,
Famous Trials
(2007).
Available at:
https://irlaw.umkc.edu/faculty_works/879