In this Episode of The Lizzie Borden Podcast we conclude our Lizzie Borden Primer with Sarah Miller, the author of The Borden Murders: Lizzie Borden & The Trial of the Century.  For those listeners who are unfamiliar with the details of Lizzie Borden’s life and the Borden Murders of 1892, this Primer will help orient them and give them important contexts for future episodes.

This part of the Primer covers Lizzie Borden’s life at her home Maplecroft after her controversial acquittal.  Previous to the publication of Parallel Lives: A Social History of Lizzie A. Borden and Her Fall River by the Fall River Historical Society, little was known about Lizzie’s private life in her beloved home on the Hill.  She moved into the French Street house with her sister Emma shortly after her murder trial and lived there until her death in 1927.  Over the years, urban legends have accumulated about the infamous recluse who led a lonely and besieged existence.  Rumors of scandalous affairs and forced confessions to the murders have dominated our narrative of the Maplecroft years, but Parallel Lives recasted Lizzie as a woman leading a very composed life behind her wall of privacy.  A Lizzie Borden Primer Part 4 explores that private life, attempting to separate the mythic Lizzie from the very real woman who maintained her dignity in the face of great odds.

This episode concludes the Lizzie Borden Primer.  Anyone who wants to hear the life story of Lizzie Borden from her birth in 1860 to her death in 1927 could listen to these four episodes.

Listen to Episode 9 here.  Also available on iTunes.