ATTORNEY GENERAL PILLSBURY.
ATTORNEY GENERAL PILLSBURY.
ATTORNEY GENERAL PILLSBURY.
She took out her ironing-board. Why had she not been ironing in the cellar part of the house. Mr. Foreman, we do not know. She had no duties around the household, so Emma tells us. Therewas nothing for her to do. Bridget goes into the dining room. Having finished her windows in the sitting room, it took only a moment to go inside. Comes into the dining room to wash the windows and the old gentleman comes down from his room and goes into the sitting room and sits down. She suggests to him, with the spirit in which Judas kissed his master, that, as he is weary with his day’s work, it would be well for him to lie down upon the sofa and rest. Then she goes into the dining room again, gets her ironing board, and proceeds to iron her handkerchiefs. Bridget finishes her work. She tells Bridget, and that is the first time that Bridget heard it directly, as I stated to you yesterday, that if she goes out that afternoon to be sure to lock the doors, because Mrs. Borden had gone out on a sick call. And she says: “Miss Lizzie, who is sick?” Miss Lizzie replies: “I don’t know, but it must be in town, for she had a note this morning.” She never did, and Bridget goes upstairs to take her little rest and leaves this woman ironing those handkerchiefs nearer to her father as he lay on that sofa than my distinguished friend is to me, at this moment. Again she was alone with her victim. O, unfortunate combination of circumstances, always. Again she is alone in the house with the man who was found murdered. It may be safely said to be less than twenty minutes from that time she calls Bridget down stairs and tells her that her father is killed. There is another straw, Mr. Foreman, another chip on the surface, not floating in an eddy, but always out in the middle of the currant, that tells us with irresistible distinctness of what happened after Bridget went upstairs. She had a good fire to iron the clothes with. Why do I say that? I will not speak without the evidence if I can help it. Officer Harrington comes along, takes a car that reaches city hall at12:15, goes along Main street, goes to the house, talks with Lizzie, and, last of all, takes the cover off the stove and sees there, and I will read his own words: “The fire was near extinguished; on the end there was a little fire, I should judge about as large as the palm of my hand. The embers were about dying.” That was as early as12:30. I need not say to you that if there was fire enough to be seen at12:30there was fire enough to work with an hour and a half before 11 o’clock. There was fire enough. There is no trouble on that account. It was a little job she had to do, nine handkerchiefs at the outside, perhaps eight or seven, and when this thing is over Miss Russell gets the handkerchiefs and takes them upstairs, where we find a fatal thing, we find that four or five, I give the exact words of those handkerchiefs: “Areironed and two or three are sprinkled ready to iron.” Whatever else is true, she had begun her work before Bridget went upstairs, she was engaged in it when Bridget left her. It was a job that could not have taken her any more than ten minutes at the outside, if I may use the common expression of mankind in that sort of work, and the clock of Lizzie’s course of life stopped the instant Bridget left the room. What for? What for, gentlemen? It would have taken but a minute or so to finish them. The day was well gone, the dinner hour was approaching. There were four or five to take away and but two or three to finish, and in less time than I am speaking it would have been done.
It is terribly significant. There is that in this case which is far deeper than these accidental variations. She says to Bridget, not to an officer, “I was out in the back yard and heard a groan, and came in and the screen door was wide open,” I may have occasion to say that that story was not true either, and was not consistent with any other story that she told. Dr. Bowen came next, I believe. He says, “Where have you been?” O, pregnant question that nobody could fail to ask. “In the barn looking for some irons or iron,” she answers. Mrs. Churchill came next—I may not have the order right—and that honest woman asked it the first thing, “Where were you when it happened, Lizzie?” “I went to the barn to get a piece of iron.” Miss Russell heard the remark. She does not distinctly remember asking it, and she is her friend: “What did you go to the barn for, Lizzie?” “I went to get a piece of tin or iron to fix my screen.” And Mr. Fleet came in, and politely, as you may believe, courteously, as you are glad to think, he talked to her about that important question of where she was when this thing happened. Let me read it word for word, for it is vital and significant and Mr. Buck will not say that one word of it is misconstrued or misremembered or falsely stated. He asked her if she knew anything about the murders. “She said that she did not, all she knew was that her father came home about10:30or10:45, went into the sitting room, sat down in a large chair, took out some papers and looked at them. She was ironing in the dining room some handkerchiefs, as she stated. She saw that her father was feeble, and she went to him and advised and assisted him to lie down upon the sofa. She then went into the dining room to her ironing, but left after her father was lain down, and went out into the yard and went up in the barn. I asked her how long she remained in the barn; she said she remained in the barn about half an hour. I then asked her what she meant by ‘up in the barn.’She said, ‘I mean up in the barn, upstairs, sir.’ She said after she had been up there about half an hour she came down again, went into the house and found her father lying on the lounge.” Mr. Foreman and gentlemen, we must judge all facts, all circumstances as they appeal to your common sense. There is no other test; there is no other duty; there is no other way of arriving at justice, and tried by that standard I assert that that story is simply incredible. I assert that that story is simply absurd. I assert that that story is not within the bounds of reasonable possibilities.
That is not all. Saturday again the mayor of the city, who I assume is a gentleman, whom I know you will believe to be one, and Marshal Hilliard, who has answered by his dignified and courteous and wholly respectable presence all the slanders you have heard about him in his simple and unaffected way of testifying in this case, which is refutation enough of all the wicked things that have been said of him—that men came there Saturday evening, and again incidentally that story was referred to. She told her friend Alice that she went to get a piece of iron to fix her screen. She told them that she went out into the barn to get some sinkers. It is not so much the contradiction I call your attention to, for I want to be entirely fair, for both errands might have been in her mind.
Why could we not have had somebody to have told us what was the screen that needed fixing, and to have corroborated that story by finding the piece of iron that was put into the screen when she was left alone and when she came back in her fright. Show us the fish line that these sinkers went on. It was easy to do if they were in existence, if there was any truth in the story. Show us something by which we can verify this ferocious fact, that the alibi she was driven to put for herself is a good one. I will spend a little time in the prosecution of this argument to discuss Mr. Lubinsky. What he saw and when he saw it are absolutely indefinite. Let me treat him with entire fairness and justice. To begin with, he is a discarded witness. He went with his story first to Wilkinson and then to Mr. Mullaly and then to Mr. Phillips before the hearing in the district court. Mr. Mullaly tells you just what he told him. He saw Mr. Mullaly and told him it was about half past 10 when he went by and saw somebody coming from the barn. That was on the8thday of August. About two weeks after the time—I do not need the record, for I remember it as though it was yesterday—about two weeks after that time he told Mr. Phillips. Yes, it would be the22dof August. This hearing ran through the24th,25th,26th,27th, and into the firstday of September. He told a reporter, and I presume it was published, although I do not know about that. I won’t say that, for I don’t know. Mr. Phillips was present there in court; witnesses were called for the defense, and Lubinsky was not called. He had not got things patched up. And I want to know in this connection what was the necessity of having that line drawn so carefully by the surveyor across the plan of the first day. What has been the significance of that thing by which it was made to appear that a surveyor could find a line clear from a point on the street to the barn door? And you were asked to squint across there. You saw that you could not see the fraction of a rabbit that came out of that barn door. Has that any connection with the first attempt at Lubinsky? I do not know. It is one of those things they have started and have flashed in the pan. Medley was the first one there. He got the news before11:30. He took a team that was coming up the street, and drove as fast as he could drive it. He went to the station house and got the men, started for the Borden house, and as he went by the city hall clock it was nineteen or twenty minutes before 12. He went there; he went into the house. He saw Miss Borden. He came out and went into the barn. Other men did the same thing. It occurred to many, he went there first because he was the one that found the door shut, and the others, excepting these wonderful boy detectives, found it open. All the contradiction of Medley is an attempt to contradict him about time. Something has been said, Mr. Foreman and gentlemen, as to the conduct of the defendant during this trying time. In my desire to say no word that is not borne out by the exact facts, I forbear to criticise or to ask you to consider against her her general demeanor after this tragedy. I quite agree for once with my distinguished friend in his suggestion that the absence of tears, that the icy demeanor may have either meant consciousness of guilt or consciousness of loss.
I would not lift the weight of my finger to urge that this woman remarkable though she is, nervy as she is, brave as she is, cool as she is, should be condemned because grief, it may have been, but for other things in the case, drove back the tears to their source and forbade her to show the emotions that belong to the sex. But there are some things that are pregnant. My distinguished friend tells of the frequency of presentiments. They are frequent in the storybooks, Mr. Foreman. If they occur in real life they are usually thought of afterward. Did you ever hear one expressed beforehand? Tell me that this woman was physically incapable of that deed? Mydistinguished friend has not read female character enough to know that when a woman dares she dares, and when she will she will, and that given a woman that has that absolute command of herself who told Mrs. Reagan even, that the failure to break that egg was the first time she had ever failed in anything she undertook, a woman whose courage surpassed that of any man I am talking to, I very humbly believe—tell me that she is physically incapable of this act? But those are trifles, Mr. Foreman. Those are trifles. Those are little chips that do not perhaps directly indicate which way the current flows. But there is more in the case than that. Of course the question arises to one’s lips. How could she have avoided the spattering of her dress with blood if she was the author of these crimes? As to the first crime, it is scarcely necessary to attempt to answer the question. In the solitude of that house, with ample fire in the stove, with ample wit of woman nobody has suggested that as to the first crime there was not ample opportunity, ample means and that nothing could be suggested as a reason why all the evidence of that crime could not have been amply and successfully concealed. But as to the second murder the question is one of more difficulty. I cannot answer it. You cannot answer it. You are neither murderers nor women. You have neither the craft of the assassin nor the cunning and deftness of the sex. There are some things, however, in the case that we know, and one of them is, and perhaps one of the pregnant facts in the case is, that when the officers had completed their search, and in good faith had asked her to produce the dress she was wearing that morning, they were fooled with that garment which lies on that trunk, which was not upon her when any human being saw her. That is a pretty bold assertion. Let us see what the evidence of it is, because as to that matter the evidence is contradictory, and it is the first proposition, I believe that I have addressed touching which there is even an attempt to show contradictory evidence. I have trod on ground on which no attempt has been made to block the ordinary course of reasoning, and I now approach the first subject in which there is any attempt to show contradiction, and it turns out to be no contradiction whatever. This dress has been described to you as a silk dress and dark blue evidently, a dress with a figure which is not at all like a diamond, a dress which is not cheap, a dress which would not be worn in ironing by any prudent woman, of course not. It is an afternoon dress. Do your wives dress in silk when they go down in the kitchen to work, and in their household duties in the morning before dinner? But I amnot compelled to stay at suppositions of reasoning: I come to facts. There was one woman in this world who saw Lizzie Borden after these murders were done, and when she saw her did not suspect that murder had been done.
Who was that? It was that clear, intelligent, honest daughter of one of Fall River’s most honored citizens, Adelaide Churchill. Everybody else saw her when they knew murder had been done. Addie Churchill saw her when the most she suspected was that somebody had become sick again. She describes the dress she had on that morning. I will read it, word for word, to you, because it is vital: “It looked like a light blue and white ground work; it seemed like calico or cambric, and it had a light blue and white ground work with a navy blue diamond printed on it.” Was the whole dress alike, the skirt and waist? It looked so to me. Was that the dress she had on this morning (showing dark blue dress?) She did not wish to harm a hair of Lizzie’s head. She was her neighbor and her friend, and she would avoid it if she could. But she answered, “It does not look like it.” Mr. Moody puts it again: “Was it, was it?” Ah, Addie Churchill will have to give an answer which will convict this woman of putting up a dress which is not the one she wore. She is no police detective conspiring against her life, but her next door neighbor, her friend, and her friend to-day. When Mr. Moody puts the straight question to her: “Was it?” she answers: “That is not the dress I have described.” Still it is not quite close enough. My learned friend wants it answered more closely, and asks, “Was it the dress she had on?” Mrs. Churchill can avoid answering no longer, and she says, “I did not see her with it on that morning.” She further describes the dress as having the ground work of a color “like blue and white mixed.” It is not the testimony of one who wants her convicted. I may well believe, I am glad to believe, although I know nothing of it, that it is the testimony of one who would rejoice if she were not convicted. Now comes another witness, who I believe would cut his heart strings before he would say a word against that woman if he could help it, and that is her physician and friend, Dr. Seabury W. Bowen, who away back in the early stages of this case gave testimony, and the testimony is all the more valuable because it comes from her intimate friend, and was given at a time when it was not supposed there was ever to be any discussion about it. He undertakes to describe the dress. Do you remember how Lizzie was dressed that morning? “It is pretty hard work for me. Probably if I could see a dresssomething like it I could guess, but I could not describe it; it was a sort of drab, not much color to it to attract my attention—a sort of morning calico dress, I should judge.” That is not all. The morning dress she had worn many times, as Miss Emma is obliged to say, poor girl. She put it in her testimony (she wanted to help her sister) that it was very early in the morning. Oh, unfortunate expression. Did you ever know a girl to change her dress twice a morning, ever in the world? It was a morning dress, and the day before the tragedy happened Bridget tells us that that cheap morning dress, light blue with a dark figure, Wednesday morning the dress she had on was of that description, and it was this very bedford cord. Undoubtedly. She never wore it afterward. Friday she has on this dress. Saturday she has on this dress, mornings and afternoon. It is good enough for her to wear then. Perhaps there is not any distinction of morning and afternoon then in that house of the dead. We have had evidence of the character of the search that was made in the house. It can, perhaps, all be well summed up in the suggestion that the search of Thursday was perfunctory, insufficient and indecisive. It was with no particular definite aim in view. It was absolutely without any idea that the inmates of the house knew of this crime. It was that sort of a search which goes through and does not see what it ought to see. But it was enough to set them on their guard. There was in that house somewhere a bedford cord dress. That bedford cord dress had been stained with paint. I welcome that fact. My learned associate never said it had not been stained with paint. I believe it had. No, I ought not to say that. I hope, I may be corrected if I say that I believe it at any time. There is no assertion or pretence that it had not been stained with paint. It had not stopped the wearing of it, though.
It was good enough for a morning dress, good enough for an ironing dress, good enough for a chore dress around the house in the morning. But the Thursday’s search had put them on their guard, and when, Saturday afternoon, the officers came there, they were prepared for the most absolutely thorough search that could be made in that house. Where was that paint stained bedford cord? Where was that dress with paint spots on it, so thickly covering it that it was not fit to wear any more? Where was it that the officers did not see it? Emma alone can tell us, and Emma tries to tell us that it was in that closet. Emma says that Saturday night she saw that dress upon the hook, and said to Lizzie “You’d better destroy this dress,” and Lizzie said she would. Nobody heard that conversationbut Lizzie and Emma. So we cannot contradict their words excepting by what followed. Mark the exact use of language. Alice Russell said that when she came down stairs that morning she went into the kitchen and Lizzie stood by the stove with a dress skirt in her hand and a waist on the shelf near by, and Emma turned round and said to her, “Lizzie, what are you going to do?” “I am going to burn this old thing up. It is all covered with paint.” There is scarcely a fact that is not incriminating against Lizzie. Mrs. Reagan has come on the stand and told upon her oath against a woman who is her friend, with whom she had no difficulties and who is of her own sex, against whom she can have no object of resentment or hatred, as to induce her to commit the foulest of crimes, has told a story which is extremely significant. I should have hesitated to express myself as to its significance were it not for the attestation of that fact by the agitation, the hurrying and scurrying, the extraordinary efforts put forth by her friends as soon as it was unadvisedly published to suppress and deny it. They saw its significance, they are unwilling witnesses to the character of the story and the way it bears upon the case. That thing took place. Mrs. Reagan has appeared before you and you are to judge whether you like her looks or not. You are to be judges of her evidence. Miss Emma, who knew what took place, never came to Mrs. Reagan, and said, “You have told a lie!” They were the ones to have denied it. They were the ones to have asked her to take it back. Miss Emma was in there the next day after the publication, and she never found it out in her heart to say to Mrs. Reagan: “Why, Mrs. Reagan, you have published an infamous and wicked lie about us!” It was these same self-constituted friends who have filled the newspapers with denunciations of delay in a trial of this cause because the appointed officer was lying sick at his home and could not attend to it, when the courteous and accomplished gentlemen, who had her interests in charge, my learned friends never complained and do not to this day complain, to their credit be it said.
I had intended, Mr. Foreman and gentlemen, at this point, to attempt to recapitulate these things to you. I do not think I will do it. If I have not made them plain they cannot be made plainer. Every one of them excepting the incident of the burning of the dress and the accuracy of the witnesses as to the dress that is produced, depend upon facts that there is no denial of. We find a woman murdered by blows which were struck with a weak and indecisive hand. We find that that woman had no enemies in all the worldexcepting the daughter that had repudiated her. We find that that woman was killed at half past nine, when it passes the bounds of human credulity to believe that it could have been done without her knowledge, her presence, her sight, her hearing. We find a house guarded by night and by day so that no assassin could find lodgment in it for a moment. We find that after that body had been murdered a falsehood of the very essence of this whole case is told by that girl to explain the story to the father, who would revenge it and delay him from looking for her. We find her then set in her purpose turned into a mania, so far as responsibility is concerned, considering the question of what to do with this witness who could tell everything of that skeleton if he saw fit. He had not always told all he knew. He had forbidden telling of that burglary of Mrs. Borden’s things for reasons that I do not know anything about, but which I presume were satisfactory to him, but he would not have so suppressed or concealed this tragedy, and so the devil came to her as God grant it may never come to you or me, but it may. When the old man lay sleeping she was prompted to cover her person in some imperfect way and remove him from life and conceal the evidences, so far as she could in the hurried time that was left her. She did not call Maggie until she got ready. She had fifteen minutes, which is a long time, and then called her down, and without helping the officers in one single thing, but remonstrating with them for going into her room and asking her questions—those servants of the law who were trying to favor her, never opening her mouth except to tell the story of the barn, and then a story of the note, which is all she ever told in the world. We find that woman in a house where is found in the cellar a hatchet which answers every requirement of this case, where no outside assassin could have concealed it, and where she alone could have put it. We find in that house a dress which was concealed from the officers until it was found that the search was to be resumed and safety was not longer assured. The dress was hidden from public gaze by the most extraordinary act of burning that you ever heard of in all your lives by an innocent person.
We say these things float on the great current of our thought and tell just where the stream leads to. We get down now to the elements of ordinary crime. We get hatred, we get malice, we get falsehood about the position and disposition of the body. We get absurd and impossible alibis. We get contradictory stories that are not attempted to be verified. We get fraud upon the officers by the substitution of an afternoon silk dress as the one that she was wearingthat morning ironing, and capping the climax by the production of evidence that is beyond all question, that there was a guilty destruction of the dress that she feared the eye of the microscope might find the blood upon. What is the defense, Mr. Foreman? What is the answer to this array of impregnable facts? Nothing, nothing. I stop and think, and I say again, nothing. Some dust thrown upon the story of Mrs. Reagan which is not of the essence of the case, some question about time put upon the acts of Mr. Medley which is not of the essence of the case; some absurd and trifling stories about drunken men the night before and dogs in the yard the night before. Of men standing quietly on the street the same day of the tragedy, exposing their bloody persons for the inspection of passersby, of a pale, irresolute man walking up the street in broad daylight. Nothing, nothing. The distinguished counsel, with all his eloquence, which I can’t hope to match or approach, has attempted nothing but to say, “Not proven.” But it is proven; it is proven. We cannot measure facts, Mr. Foreman. We cannot put a yardstick to them. We cannot determine the length and breadth and the thickness of them. There is only one test of facts. Do they lead us to firm belief? if they do they have done the only duty they are capable of. You cannot measure the light that shines about you; you cannot weigh it, but we know when it is light because it shines into our hearts and eyes. That is all there is to this question of reasonable doubt. Give the prisoner every vestige of benefit of it. The last question to be answered is taken from these facts together. Are you satisfied that it was done by her? I have attempted, Mr. Foreman, how imperfectly none but myself can say, to discharge the sad duty which has devolved upon me.
He who could have charmed and entertained and inspired you is still detained by sickness, and it has fallen to my lot to fill unworthily the place of the chief lawgiver of this commonwealth. But I submit these facts to you with the confidence that you are men of courage and truth. I have no other suggestion to make to you than that you shall deal with them with that courage that befits sons of Massachusetts. I do not put it on so low a ground as to ask you to avenge these horrid deaths. O, no, I do not put it even on the ground of asking you to do credit to the good old commonwealth of Massachusetts. I lift you higher than that, gentlemen. I advance you to the altitude of the conscience that must be the final master of us all. You are merciful men. The wells of mercy, I hope, are not dried up in any of us. But this is not the time nor the place for theexercise of it. That mighty prerogative of mercy is not absent from the jurisprudence of this glorious old commonwealth. It is vested in magistrates, one of the most conspicuous of whom was the honored gentleman who has addressed you before me, and to whom no appeal for mercy ever fell upon harsh or unwilling ears. Let mercy be taken care of by those to whom you have intrusted the quality of mercy. It is not strained in the commonwealth of Massachusetts. It is not for us to discuss that. It is for us to answer questions, the responsibility of which is not with you nor with me. We neither made these laws, nor do we execute them. We are responsible only for the justice, the courage, the ability with which we meet to find an answer to the truth. Rise, gentlemen, rise to the altitude of your duty. Act as as you would act when you stand before the great white throne at the last day. What shall be your reward? The ineffable consciousness of duty done. There is no strait so hard, there is no affliction so bitter, that it is not made light and easy by the consciousness that in times of trial you have done your duty and your whole duty. There is no applause of the world, there is no station of hight, there is no seduction of fame that can compensate for the gnawings of an outraged conscience. Only he who hears the voice of his inner consciousness, it is the voice of God himself saying to him “Well done, good and faithful servant,” can enter into the reward and lay hold of eternal life.