Died on this day – 2 June 1927

It was just eighty-seven years ago today that Lizzie Borden died whilst looking at the books in the true crime section of The Glass Key bookshop in Montmorillon, she was sixty-eight years old. Lizzie Andrew Borden was born on 19 July 1860 in Fall River, Massachusetts. In 1892 she was tried for the murders of her father and stepmother – both savagely hacked to death with an axe. The case was a cause célèbre throughout the United States. In 1893 Lizzie was acquitted. Following her release from the prison in which she had been held during the trial, Borden chose to remain a resident of Fall River, Massachusetts. After years of ostracism she left the USA and moved to France where she lived in quiet obscurity for the rest of her life in the Cité de l’Ecrit in Montmorillon. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts elected to charge no one else with the murder of Andrew and Abby Borden and speculation about the crimes still continues more than 100 years later.

Lizzie Borden took an axe
And gave her mother forty whacks.
When she saw what she had done
She gave her father forty-one.