Joseph A. Conforti

In this history of the trial of Lizzie Borden for the murder of her father and stepmother in Fall River, Massachusetts in August 1892, Joseph Conforti creates a vivid image of the time and place of one of the most sensational episodes in the annals of American crime. He makes a convincing argument for the critical elements of ethnicity and gender, and to a lesser degree, class, in the acquittal of Miss Borden.

Conforti notes that popular suspicion first fell on a number of immigrants in Fall River. There was a large Portuguese community that worked in the textile mills of "Spindle City" as Fall River was known, and many assumed the "fiend" must have been one of them. The very first suspect arrested was a Russian Jewish peddler seen in the vicinity of the Borden house about the time of the murders. He was soon released for lack of evidence. Many cast a suspicious eye on the Bordens' Irish servant Bridget Sullivan. And the Fall River Police Department, largely composed of Irish American officers, was widely criticized for its alleged hostility to Lizzie Borden and its incompetence.

Lizzie apparently benefited from being a Borden, one of the leading families of Fall River, a woman of solid Yankee stock, a devout Christian (Congregationalist), and a Sunday school teacher and member of the Womens Christian Temperance Union. Conforti argues that her defense played on the belief that it was inconceivable that such a proper and godly lady could commit the ghastly crimes the state charged against her. It worked and she was set free, regardless of all the circumstantial evidence of her guilt.… (mere)