This article is about the Lizzie Borden made famous by the nursery rhyme; for the film-maker, see Lizzie Borden (filmmaker)

Lizzie Andrew Borden (July 19, 1860 - June 1, 1927) was an American woman accused of murder, but acquitted, and remembered chiefly as the subject of an American nursery rhyme:

Lizzie Borden took an axe

And gave her mother forty whacks.

And when she saw what she had done

She gave her father forty-one.

She was tried for the axe murders of her father and stepmother. The anonymous rhyme represents a gross overestimate of the number of axe wounds (her mother suffered 19, her father 11), but it has ensured that she is remembered as a figure of American folklore.

Lizzie was the youngest child born to Andrew and Sarah Morse Borden. Lizzie's father, a banker, was one of the richest people in Fall River. When Lizzie was two years old, her mother died; her father's second marriage a few years later supposedly caused dissension within the family over matters of inheritance and because of the lower social status of his new wife's family.

On August 4, 1892, Lizzie and Bridget Sullivan, the maid of the household, discovered the corpses of Mr. Andrew J. Borden and Abby Durfee Gray Borden , Lizzie's father and his second wife. Both had been slain by multiple axe blows. The Bordens were one of the wealthiest and most prominent families of River, Massachusetts .

A circumstantial case against Lizzie was made, without any identification of a murder weapon and no incriminating physical evidence such as bloodstained clothes. The case against Lizzie was based mostly on the testimony of a pharmacist that said that Lizzie had attempted to purchase prussic acid, a form of cyanide, and that a neighbour had seen her burning a dress.

Borden's trial occurred in June of 1893. It took two weeks, a quite long time for the period. On June 20, 1893, after ninety minutes of deliberation, the jury acquitted Lizzie of the crime.

Although acquitted of the crime, many people believed that she had done it and ostracized her. Lizzie and her surviving sister split their inheritance. Later in life, Lizzie changed her name to Lizbeth and became somewhat eccentric. She died of complications from gall bladder surgery in 1927, at the age of sixty-six. Many books expounding different theories have been written about the crime. The sisters died within a few days of each other in June 1927.

Lizzie Borden was even made the subject of an opera.

External links

• Lizzie Borden Virtual Museum
• Famous Trials page about Lizzie Borden
• 'The Straight Dope' on Lizzie Borden