Famous Trials: Lizzie Borden Trial (1893)

"Lizzie Borden took an axe, And gave her mother forty whacks, When she saw what she had done, She gave her father forty-one." Actually,the Bordens received only 29 whacks, not the 81 suggested by the famous ditty, but the popularity of the above poem is a testament to the public's fascination with the 1893 murder trial of Lizzie Borden. The source of that fascination might lie in the almost unimaginably brutal nature of the crime--given the sex, background, and age of the defendant--or in the jury's acquittal of Lizzie in the face of prosecution evidence that most historians today find compelling. A video is also provided.