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.