Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast

We had been planning to visit the Lizzie Borden house for a few years, and we finally made it happen as a stop on the way to Salem in October. Fall River, Massachusetts is about an hour and a half south of Salem, and about three hours northeast of New York City. The Bordens—Andrew and his second wife Abby, along with Andrew's daughters, Emma and Lizzie—lived at 92 Second Street in downtown Fall River from 1872 to 1892. The house has operated as a bed and breakfast since 1996, although we opted to just take a tour instead of staying overnight.

On Thursday, August 4, 1892, Abby and Andrew Borden were murdered with a hatchet in separate rooms of the house—Abby in an upstairs bedroom, and Andrew in the sitting room. Lizzie was tried and acquitted of the crime nearly a year later, and the murders remain unsolved. Lizzie and Emma moved out of the Second Street house but didn't go very far, moving to "The Hill" neighborhood, where Lizzie started going by Lisbeth. 

The house tour was really thorough and our tour guide was great. My only complaint is that our group was much too large, but we weren't surprised that it's a popular late-October destination. Almost none of the furnishings are original, but they're period-specific to what the Bordens may have had. There are a few artifacts scattered throughout the house, including replicas of Andrew and Abby's skulls (the originals were reburied after being exhumed for the trial), the dress Elizabeth Montgomery wore in "The Legend of Lizzie Borden," family photographs and a book once owned (and initialed) by Lizzie.

I knew the basics of the story before the tour and had my own theories, but after actually seeing the house I'm even more convinced that Lizzie did it. The trial itself was the first to be reported on a national level, and one of the first to use photographic evidence—it was basically the OJ Simpson case of the 1890s. The all-male jury couldn't accept that a woman was capable of such savagery, and in the absence of any real physical evidence, moved to acquit. Too much time has passed to ever really know if it was the right decision, but if you're curious, you could stay overnight and see if the Ouija board has any answers.

See also: Lizzie Borden's Grave