Rolling Rock is Not Just a Crappy Beer

I hope you all enjoyed paper Lizzie and Shannon's tour of the Borden house!  Following the tour, we set out to find the "official glacial rock of the commonwealth", so deemed in 2008, also in Fall River .

Rolling Rock is a 140-ton boulder ("conglomerate stone") which sits at the corner of Eastern Ave and County St, and was deposited at its current location 10,000 years ago by a glacier (probably originating in nearby Dighton).  The rock used to, well, rock, and legend has it that native people used to torture people by placing their limbs under the rock and rolling it over them.  This sounds like bullshit to me, but what do I know.  In any case, in the 1840s, a geologist was worried that nearby quarrying would disturb the stone, so he shimmied it to stabilize it (it no longer rocks.  SO MANY ROCK PUNS) but at the turn of the 20th century, road-widening plans threatened it again, leading the city to preserve it in 1930.

I mean, it's interesting and all, but we already have a state rock (Roxbury puddingstone) state mineral (babington) state gem (Rhodonite) state historical rock (plymouth rock) and state explorer rock (Dighton rock).  Did we need a state glacial rock, too?  I had a giant rock stuck in my shoe the other day.  I'm going to write to Governor Patrick and have him declare it the official state blogger's shoe rock.  OTHERWISE THE PAPER DOLLS SHALL HAVE WORDS WITH HIM.  And no one wants that...

She Gave Her Father Forty One

This here is the handsome Bridget Sullivan, whom our tour guide noted looked like "Christopher Reeves in a bun." She is not wrong.  Bridget was a witness for the prosecution.

Lizzie's initial inquest was held at her house, and she was denied an attorney at the time.  She was high on morphine, having been given it for her nerves, and therefore made absolutely no sense.  She was arrested and held in Taunton, as there were no facilities for women in Fall River, and her trial was held the following June, but the inquest was deemed inadmissible. 

The second picture you see is the jury of Lizzie's "peers."  In this case, however, it was in her favor, because Lizzie's lawyer, Andrew Jennings, played up her "weak femaleness" (the prosecution brought in Lizzie's father's skull, and she fainted upon seeing it) and the jury's preconceived notions of what it meant to be a woman, coupled with the evidence being only circumstantial, led to her acquittal on June 20th.  Deliberation only took 15 minutes, though the jury waited an hour and a half to release the verdict, out of respect to Mr. Borden. 

After her release, though she had been supported by them through the trial, Lizzie was shunned by her former friends.  She and Emma lived in the house for a few months, but eventually moved to a house Lizzie dubbed "Maplecroft" in the fancy neighborhood called "the Hill."  Lizzie changed her name to Lizbeth, and began partying with actors, which was truly scandalous (unlike murder?) so her sister peaced out and never spoke to her again.  Lizzie died at the age of 66, following complications of having her gall-bladder removed, and nine days later her sister died of kidney disease.  Bridget Sullivan disappeared for five years following the murders, but resurfaced in Montana, was married, and outlived both the sisters by 21 years.  When she was 87, she fell ill and called a friend, stating she had "something important to tell her."  When the friend arrived, having traveled for three days, Bridget felt better and was like "J/K nevermind thanks for coming," and never revealed what she was going to say.  She died the next year.

Lizbet left most of her money to the Fall River Animal Rescue League.

So--who did it?  There are many theories, and armchair detective tourist thinks Uncle John did it, or at least helped, whereas human Shannon and Lizzie think that Lizbeth herself committed the murders (and the Lifetime made for TV movie "Lizzie Borden Took and Ax" agrees), or at the very least, committed them in concert with Bridget Sullivan.  If I were shitting myself silly, and someone made me climb a ladder in the sweltering heat to clean the mother fucking windows, I'd axe them in the head, too.  Haha just kidding no I wouldn't....

But paper doll Lizzie would...

When She Saw What She had Done

 From the sitting room, we went up to the spare bedroom.  One of our tour guides was lying on the floor to show us where Mrs. Borden had been, demonstrating that anyone on the front stairs would have seen the body.  Mrs. Borden had been making the bed when someone approached her, and struck her on the side of the head with a hatchet.  She spun, and fell face down on the floor, whereupon her assailant straddled her and struck her an additional 19 times to the back of the head.  The top picture is the bed Mrs. Borden was making when she was murdered, and she died on the floor to the left of it.  The second picture is Lizzie's bedroom.

After Bridget had let Mr. Borden in, she spoke to Lizzie, who gave her permission to go to a department store sale, but being ill, she went upstairs to nap instead.  Lizzie's story of events following her father's return home changed, as she originally stated that she went into the barn to look for tin to fix a door, and hung around in the loft eating pears.  At the trial, she said she was looking for sinkers in the barn for a fishing trip she was to undertake with her father the next week, and had remained there only ten minutes.  In either case, she said she came back to the house and yelled to Bridget, "Maggie, come quick!  Father's dead! Somebody came in and killed him."  (Note--Emma was away at the time, but both girls called Bridget "Maggie," the name of their previous maid.  Nice.)

According to our tour guide, the main Fall River police officers were chilling at Rocky Point that day, leaving behind inept officers who processed the scene very sloppily.  They asked Lizzie where her step-mother was, and she said Abby had received a note asking her to visit a sick friend.  Lizzie then told Bridget to go upstairs and look, and Bridget was all "HELL NO," and didn't go up until a neighbor came with her, and half way up the stairs, they saw Mrs. Borden's body on the floor.

Lizzie was calm and cool during her interviews, but contradicted herself several times.  Despite this, they didn't check Lizzie for bloodstains, and tromped all over the house, disturbing evidence, and some even clipped pieces of Mr. Borden's clothes and hair for souvenirs.  In the basement they found two axes, and a suspicious looking hatchet, that had been freshly broken off from the handle, and had been covered in ash to make it look like it'd been there for some time.  The police left these tools at the house.

By this point, Uncle John had returned with a solid alibi, somehow having managed to remember everyone he'd seen on the bus, along with the bus driver's name and serial number.  When human Shannon takes the bus, she's lucky if she can remember her own name.

Two days later, on August 6th, the police did a more thorough investigation of the house, and took the hatchet with them.  That evening, they told Lizzie she was a suspect, and the next morning, a neighbor walked in on Lizzie burning a dress in the oven.  She said that it had been covered in paint.

And Gave Her Mother 40 Whacks

 From the parlor, we made our way to the dining room, where the autopsies were conducted, not on the dining room table as has often been reported, but rather on a coroner's rack.  The tour guide, named Danielle, handed around close up pictures taken of Mr. and Mrs. Borden's bodies after the crime scene, which can never be unseen.  After that we passed into a second sitting room, where Mr. Borden was killed.

The murders were committed on August 4th.  It was hot as hell--the entire family had been violently ill-- and while Abby Borden had feared poisoning, as her husband had many enemies (and Lizzie herself had tried to buy prussic acid at a druggist the previous day to clean a cloak, but had been denied the substance) but when autopsies of Mr. and Mrs. Borden were conducted, it was shown to be "summer sickness," or what we'd call food poisoning from leaving nasty-ass mutton out on the stove for several days in the blistering heat and then eating the disgusting fucking bacteria laden meat. All that and no indoor plumbing.  Fun.

That morning, Mr. Borden spoke with his former brother-in-law, who then left via bus to visit some other nieces.  Andrew went to work, and Abby asked the maid, Bridget, to wash the second floor windows.  Bridget asked if it could wait, for she too was ill, but Abby was like "lol you are not a real person you are Irish and a maid" and told her to get to work.  Bridget went to clean the windows, and Abby went to remake the bed in the second floor guest room, which was at the top of the front stairs, where John had been sleeping.  Mr. Borden came home from work at about 10:30am and tried to unlock the front door, but found his key didn't work.  He banged on the door and Bridget tried to open it, and (being Irish) she issued an expletive when it stuck.  She heard Lizzie laughing from the front stairs (and you could see the guest bedroom, where Mrs. Borden was, from the stairs) but didn't look back, and let Mr. Borden in, who went up the side stairs to his room, before coming back down to lie on the couch for a nap.

The second floor of the Borden's house had a curious arrangement, in that there were no hallways, and to deal with this, Emma and Lizzie accessed their bedrooms through the front stairs, and Lizzie, who's bedroom abutted the master suite, locked her door and shoved her bed up against it, so her father wouldn't be able to walk through that way.  He was of similar mind, and accessed his bedroom through the servant's stairs on the side, dead bolted his door, and pushed a dresser against it.  His wife had a small room next to his, and "robbers" had brazenly broken into the house during daylight one year before, stealing money, jewels, and trolley tickets (all from Mrs. Borden).  Mr. Borden called for an investigation, but suddenly dropped it when two boys were apprehended upon trying to use the tickets, and said "Miss Lizzie gave them to us," when questioned.  This is why Mr. Borden insisted on locking all the rooms in the house, keeping the key to his bedroom on the mantel in the room where he was eventually murdered.

And as he laid down to take his nap, his wife already lay dead on the floor of the spare bedroom, having been killed an hour and a half before.  As he slept, his assailant split his face with an axe, hitting him ten or eleven times.  It is important to note that while the other people on the tour sat on the couch, human Lizzie and Shannon were the only two who classily reenacted the scene.  We paper dolls are far more tasteful.

Lizzie Borden Took an Axe

Bonjour!  It is us, the paper dolls from Lizzie and Shannon's trip to Quebec, and today we have adventured to Fall River, Massachusetts to visit the Lizzie Borden house, because everyone knows that Lizzies (including my paper friend Lizzie, in the blue) are extremely dangerous.

Andrew Borden, father of the infamous Lizzie, though having rich relatives, was a self-made man who lived frugally in his sizable house in Fall River.  Although most of the affluent citizens of Fall River had indoor plumbing by this time, the Bordens did not, and instead had privies in the basement, and chamber pots in the bedrooms, the Bordens' bedrooms being on the second floor, and the maid's, Bridget Sullivan's, on the third.  Mr. Borden made his money through casket building initially, and then through commercial property development, and at his untimely death, was worth, by 2014 standards, just under $8 million.

Lizzie's mother had passed away when Lizzie was a child (some sort of uterine infection, that spread through her body and killed her slowly and painfully), and Mr. Borden subsequently remarried, and Lizzie and her sister, Emma, seemed to dislike their stepmother Abby (whom they coolly called "Mrs. Borden").  Mr. Borden often had to bail out his wife's family financially (buying them property, for instance) and the girls resented this, demanding their own rental property.  Mr. Borden acquiesced, and sold the girls the home they'd lived in until their mother died for the price of $1.  They sold this back to their father for $5000.  The night before the murders, Lizzie and Emma's Uncle John (brother of their deceased mother) came to visit and discuss "business" with Mr. Borden, which could have aggravated an already tense situation.

Also, Lizzie was a big animal lover, and had built a roost in their barn for pigeons, but Mr. Borden thought the pigeons were attracting children, and so he killed them all (the pigeons, not the children) with a hatchet, which upset Lizzie very much.  In the second picture, Human Lizzie is with Paper Lizzie in the Borden's parlor, where Lizzie Borden was accused of murder, and where we began our tour.  Along for the ride, aside from our human counterparts, was a couple consisting of an armchair detective who is fond of the tanning beds, and her husband, who kept accidentally bumping into stuff, as well as a mother and her 8 year old son, who was super creepy, and is obviously a murderer in training.  I think his mother would agree.