While not an entirely unsupported conjecture, Lizzie Borden’s lesbianism should also be taken as part of the fiction.
Shortly after the trial Lizzie adopted the name Lizbeth and moved into a new and luxurious home. In 1897 a warrant for her arrest was issued, charging that she had stolen two inexpensive paintings on marble from the Tilden-Thurber Company in Providence. The warrant was never served.[1] According to one source, the paintings were called Love’s Dream and Love’s Awakening.[2]
At the turn of the century, a man divorcing his wife on charges of lesbianism named Lizbeth A. Borden of Fall River as corespondent. Judge William Trowbridge Forbes of the Probate Court in Worcester County dismissed the charges as frivolous.[3] Emma lived with her sister in the new house on French Street until 1905, when — after an argument following the midnight entertainment of Lizzie’s close friend, the actress Nance O’Neil — she packed her bags and left the house,[4] never to return, never to see Lizzie again. In a later interview, Emma said, “The happenings at the French Street house that caused me to leave, I must refuse to talk about. I did not go until conditions became absolutely unbearable. Then, before taking action, I consulted the Rev. A. E. Buck. After carefully listening to my story, he said it was imperative that I should make my home elsewhere. I do not expect ever to set foot on the place while she lives.”[5]
A poem carved into the wood above the fireplace in Lizzie’s new bedroom read:
Carved into the mahogany mantel of the library fireplace were the words “At Hame in My Ain Countrie,” taken from a poem by the Scottish poet Allan Cunningham. When Lizzie died in 1927, at the age of sixty-eight, the soloist at her funeral sang a song composed to those words.
Clause 28 of Lizzie’s will read: “I have not given my sister, Emma L. Borden, anything as she had her share of her father’s estate and is supposed to have enough to make her comfortable.” She signed the will as both Lizzie A. Borden and Lizbeth A. Borden.
Her sister died ten days later in Newmarket, New Hampshire.
They are both buried in Fall River’s Oak Grove Cemetery, where the remains of Mr. and Mrs. Borden also lie.
Bridget Sullivan died in Butte, Montana, in March of 1948, at the age of eighty-two. She had gone west fifty-one years earlier, had settled in Anaconda, married a man whose last name was also Sullivan and — according to at least one report — had numerous children.
2
Victoria Lincoln,