Lizzie Borden Research Paper

“Lizzie Borden took an ax, gave her mother forty whacks, when she saw what she had done she gave her father forty-one.” You may have heard this rhyme while jump roping or hopscotching when you were growing up, but this rhyme is not just a made up tune for the playground. This song was based on a true unsolved mystery that happened in 1892 (Linder). The song has displayed some misleading information, such as her mother receiving forty whacks and her father receiving forty-one. When in reality her stepmother was struck nineteen times and her father was struck ten or eleven times. Despite the rhyme having inaccurate details of the stabbing, the story of a young woman viciously murdering her parents is absolutely true (Frizell). This murder happened

When Lizzie was growing up, she was not outgoing, and because of this she happened to be very shy with few friends (Criminal). The loneliness in her childhood could have been one factor leading her to become a part of such an evil crime. Leading into her teen and young adult years, she was accused of shoplifting a couple times, although there is no charges against her in those years. Having a suspicious past in criminal activity makes it reasonable to understand that she could have committed another crime later on in her adult life (Criminal). This leads up to the extremely strange and bizarre behavior that was exhibited by Lizzie the week of the murder. It happens that the cashier of the drug store in Lizzie’s town claimed that she entered the store just the day before the misdeed, asking for Prussic-Acid, which can be remarkably deadly when used in the wrong ways (Carlisle and Savage). The request was very odd, but because of the risk of this acid being so deadly, no purchase was ever made, making this hard to use against her in court (Carlisle and Savage). What makes this even more questionable is many friends of the Borden’s recalled the night before the murder Andrew had become exceptionally ill after dinner, and his wife Abby had even suggested the possibility of poison (Booth 51). This contributes to the possibility

As soon her her father died, Lizzie, now Lisbeth and her sister inherited 300,000 which is around 8 million in today’s economy (Booth 51). While Lizzie and her sister were growing up, they knew that their dad had enough money to live in “The Hill”, a wealthy neighborhood of their town, but he instead chose to live simple (52). The Borden sisters did not agree with his simple lifestyle and desired to live with luxuries such as a bath, heated water, and gas lights (49). Lizzie took her new inheritance and did exactly what she had been longing to do and bought a new house in the wealthy side of town (52). She also indulged in indoor plumbing and a telephone (Tooley). The rate of which Lisbeth spent her money seemed very planned. The things she bought were all the things she had been denied of having growing up. The greed she possessed backed up the claims of her motives of acquiring her father’s