The reporter for the Times had written:
The prisoner sat behind the Deputy Sheriff and listened to Mr. Moody’s careful address with the closest attention, as calm and as unmoved as ever. Her eyes looked straight toward the speaker. Indeed, the spectators seemed as much interested in the prosecutor’s words as did Miss Borden, and but for the uniformed being sitting beside her, she might have been taken by a stranger for one of those who had come to the courtroom with no greater interest than that of curiosity. It was a great surprise, therefore, to everybody when just as Mr. Moody finished speaking Miss Borden fell back in her chair in a faint.
As if the swoon had been something entirely within her power to control, and not an honest reaction to Moody’s grisly recitation of the Government’s case against her.
As the District Attorney ceased speaking, the prisoner — who, with her face covered by the fan, had sat motionless for the last hour — suddenly succumbed to the strain that had been put upon her nervous system and lost consciousness. The Reverend Mr. Jubb, sitting directly in front of her and separated only by the dock rail, turned to her assistance, and Mr. Jennings, the attorney, hurried to the place from his position. Smelling salts and water were brought into immediate requisition, and soon entire consciousness returned. In the meanwhile, the jury had retired to enjoy a brief recess, and when they returned Miss Borden again resumed her old position of interest, though marks of agitation were still plainly visible.
That same reporter was undoubtedly in the courtroom now, she surmised, somewhere among the spectators; his story had not been signed. Neither had the one in the Sun, which still annoyed her because it had described her so unfairly:
Her forehead is low but shapely, and her eyes are large and clear. She has pretty ears, small and delicate and held closely to her head. Her nose is straight...
All well and good up to that point.
... and if it might be disassociated from the heavy jaws, the wide mouth, and the thick, long and somewhat protruding lips beneath it, it could be called sensitive.
And now it began in earnest:
That which makes Lizzie Borden’s face a coarse face and all that leaves it possible for her to have committed this crime are the lower features — the mouth, the cheeks and the chin. Here her face is wide and full. It seems to possess little mobility and it indicates the possession of a sort of masculine strength that one does not like to observe in the face of a woman.
Well, she had never thought of herself as beautiful. And yet...
But looked at anywhere else, she is seen to advantage. Her attitudes are entirely graceful and womanly and her movements always easy and refined...
Thank God for small favors.
She sits for long periods motionless, with her eyes closed and her head resting lightly on the fan which she holds at her chin. Her dress, dark, plain and ordinary, is rather more in the mode than one is apt to see in a New England town...
Tailored by a dressmaker!
Her hat, too, was made by someone who understood the milliner’s art. She wears her hair in the old French twist, which, however suggestive of an antiquated fashion-plate...
Antiquated!
... nevertheless becomes her. It is well-brushed hair and greatly aids in rendering her appearance neat and ladylike...
Ah, how kind of you, sir.
This effect is heightened by the shapeliness of her arms, so far as the present style allows them to be seen below the elbows, and by her long, slender, well-gloved hands. Nobody would pick out Lizzie Borden for the fiend incarnate she must be if the indictment at issue here is credible.
She had thought while reading the article that the reporter had appointed himself as judge and jury both, deciding from the cut of her clothes, the configuration of her arms and hands, the style in which she wore her hair, the sensitivity of her nose, and the grossness of her mouth, cheeks and chin whether or not she could possibly be a fiend incarnate.
His words bothered her still.
Today, for the first time since the trial began, she had taken a seat closer to her attorneys, to the left and slightly behind them, within the bar enclosure and removed from the prisoner’s dock where she had previously sat alongside the deputy sheriff. She had come into the courtroom today bearing a small cluster of pansies, the petals of which she now idly touched, perhaps because she was determined to express only attitudes the reporters observing her would consider “entirely graceful and womanly.”
There seemed to be more women among the spectators today than there had been previously. She was not certain how she felt about this. Neither was she certain how she felt about the jury being composed entirely of men, most of them beyond middle age. Aware that she was being studied by reporters, artists, spectators and jury alike, she watched now as the next witness was called, fully cognizant of the fact that her very life was hanging in the balance here in this swelteringly hot courtroom in this small New England town.
“What is your full name, madam?”
“Mrs. Hannah H. Gifford.”
“You live in Fall River, do you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What is your occupation there?”
“I make ladies’ outside garments.”
“That is, by ‘outside’ you mean cloaks? Outside of the dresses?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Had you made cloaks of the ladies of the Borden family?”
“Yes, sir.”
“For how long?”
“Seven or eight years, more or less.”
“Did you do some work for Miss Lizzie Borden in the spring of 1892?”
“Yes, sir, I did.”
“What did you make for her then?”
“A garment. A sack.”
“Did you at any time have any talk with her about Mrs. Borden, the stepmother?”
“I object to that,” Robinson said.
“She may answer,” Mason said.
“Now, Mrs. Gifford, will you state the talk? What you said, and what she said?”
“I was speaking to her of a garment I had made for Mrs. Borden, and instead of saying ‘Mrs. Borden,’ I said ‘Mother.’ And she says, ‘Don’t say that to me, for she is a mean, good-for-nothing thing.’ I said, ‘Oh, Lizzie, you don’t mean that.’ And she said, ‘Yes, I don’t have much to do with her. I stay in my room most of the time.’ And I said, ‘You come down to your meals, don’t you?’ And she said, ‘Yes, but we don’t eat with them if we can help it.’ And that is all that was said.”
My name is Nathaniel Hathaway, and I reside in New Bedford. I’m an analytical chemist. I was educated as such at the School of Mines in New York. Columbia University. I’ve been practicing my profession since 1879, and I’ve often had occasion to be called as a witness in matters involving it.
I am acquainted with the nature and uses of drugs, and I am acquainted with the drug called hydrocyanic or prussic acid in its diluted form. What is called the two-percent solution. What is known as prussic acid in commerce. When we’re speaking of commercial prussic acid, I can only say it’s quite volatile, very volatile. I can’t give any ratio or degree of volatility. In that volatile form, if distributed in the air upon a person in the vicinity of it, it would cause headache and nausea. It passes off in the air, you see, like a number of other liquids. Ammonia, for one. Hydrochloric acid for another, a strong acid, sometimes called muriatic acid. And benzine.