Technical Difficulties

The Trial of Lizzie Borden by Cara Robertson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is well-written and extensively researched and yet I ended up feeling very meh about it. Possibly because, as with some of the other books I've read recently, I've read too much about the topic. Robertson does offer a blow by blow account of the trial, but there was nothing in this book I didn't already know, and Robertson refuses to offer any theory of the crime whatsoever. And, I mean, I admire historians who recognize the difference between historiography and speculation, but when you're writing about an unsolved crime, it seems to me a little disingenuous not to acknowledge that you have a theory. Or, if you don't, I'd prefer if you came out and said that. Some kind of attempt to come to analytical grips with the crime.

So if you're looking for a place to start reading about Lizzie Borden, this is a great choice. Robertson writes clearly and cogently and she presents the evidence comprehensively and without bias.



View all my reviews

Lincoln, Victoria. A Private Disgrace: Lizzie Borden by Daylight. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1967. [library]

---

After Lizzie Borden: The Legend, the Truth, the Final Chapter, A Private Disgrace was both a wonderful read and a relief.

Victoria Lincoln, like Arnold Brown, was a native of Fall River. More than that, she lived a block away from Lizzie Borden as a child and thus remembers both her and the society that created her. You don't have to agree with Lincoln to find her insights into Fall River's tightly closed upper class community--and its effects on Lizzie Borden--illuminating.

There are odd points at which Brown and Lincoln agree; for instance, they both argue that the judges at Lizzie's trial were horrendously biased. But whereas Brown has this terribly complicated conspiracy theory about how Lizzie was being tried and acquitted to hide the real murderer, Lincoln's theory is much simpler and more plausible: Lizzie's money hired as her defense lawyer an ex-Massachusetts governor who, as it happened, had appointed to the bench the judge who ran the trial. Robinson wanted to win the case, and Judge Dewey was cooperating to the hilt. Lincoln also makes it clear that once the judges disallowed Lizzie's damningly self-contradicting inquest testimony (and the equally damning testimony of the pharmacist who refused to sell her prussic acid), the prosecution's case pretty much fell apart.

Lincoln's theory of Lizzie's guilt is far more persuasive than Brown's theory of her innocence. Lincoln puts the pieces together--including outlying pieces like Lizzie's recurrent kleptomania--into a picture that makes sad and dreadful sense. She may or may not be right (I have no idea if her understanding of temporal lobe epilepsy is still valid or if it's been disproven), but she has made a really excellent effort.

Brown, Arnold R. Lizzie Borden: The Legend, the Truth, the Final Chapter. Nashville, TN: Rutledge Hill Press, 1991. [library]

---

All things considered, this was probably not the best place to start reading about Lizzie Borden.

( behind the cut, a fairly detailed critique )

I don't know that Arnold Brown is wrong, but he fails utterly to persuade me that he is right. Mostly, he persuades me that he is a man with a hobby horse.

---

If Arnold Brown has represented himself correctly, then it is true that he had access to primary sources that were previously unavailable. Does anyone know of any trustworthy books on the Borden murders written after 1991? I'll also gladly take opinions of pre-1991 books and whether any of them are worth pursuing, but if Brown really did have new primary sources, I'd like to know what other scholars have made of them.