So he started to arrange them so as to determine what was on them, or to learn their contents. They were very small, and it was rather difficult. But on one piece, on the upper lefthand corner, was the word Emma. And that was written in lead pencil, as well as other pieces I saw. I asked him again what they contained, and he said, “Oh, I think it’s nothing. It’s something, I think, about my daughter going through somewhere.” He then turned slightly to his left and took the lid from the stove and threw the papers in — or the pieces in.
I then noticed the firebox.
The fire was very near extinguished. On the south end there was a small fire which I judged was a coal fire. The embers were about dying. It was about as large as the palm of my hand. There had been some paper burned there before, which was rolled up and still held a cylindrical form. I should say it was about that long. Twelve inches, I should say, and not over two inches in diameter...
“Had you paid any attention to that stove before?” Robinson asked.
“No, sir. Any more than to see it as I passed by.”
“And then Dr. Bowen took off the cover in the ordinary way?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And put those papers in?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did he take off the cover over the little spot of coal you said was there?”
“No, sir.”
“Took it off at the other end?”
“At the other end.”
“So he threw it right down in where there wasn’t any fire?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And upon some embers of burnt paper?”
“No, sir. It went down between that burnt paper and the front part of the firebox.”
“That is, that was a piece of burnt paper?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Rolled up?”
“Completely carbonized.”
“About a foot long?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And I think you said about an inch or two inches.”
“I thought about two.”
“Lying there all charred and burned?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Dr. Bowen, did you subsequently see Miss Borden in her room upstairs?”
“Miss Lizzie? Yes, sir. Sometime between one and two o’clock. At that time, I gave her a preparation called bromo caffeine. For quieting nervous excitement and headache.”
“Did you give any directions as to how frequently that medicine should be given?”
“I left a second dose to be repeated in an hour.”
And here, again, Lizzie understood exactly how carefully her attorneys were preparing the ground for the possible admission of her inquest testimony. The government would without question attempt to introduce into the record all that she’d told Knowlton in Fall River last August. Her own attorneys had asked her repeatedly why her testimony had sounded so confused and contradictory, and she had told them it had naturally been a shocking time, a bewildering time — and then she had remembered that Dr. Bowen had prescribed drugs for her. Robinson had seized upon this immediately.
“The poor girl was drugged!” he’d said to Jennings.
This, now, was the first mention of any medication given by Dr. Bowen in the days immediately preceding the inquest. She knew there would be more. Whatever might be said of Robinson’s sometimes bombastic courtroom tactics, she knew he was a fastidious man who would layer in — as meticulously as an expert mason spreading mortar between bricks — a solid precautionary defense against the possible admission of the inquest testimony.
“Edward S. Wood is your name?”
“Edward S. Wood.”
“You live in Boston?”
“Yes, sir.”
“At present, what is your occupation?”
“I am a physician and chemist — professor of chemistry in the Harvard Medical School.”
“How long have you held that position?”
“As an assistant professor of chemistry from 1871 to 1876, and professor of chemistry since 1876.”
“Have you given special attention to any particular branch of science?”
“To medical chemistry.”
“Does that also include what is also called physiological chemistry?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Have you had experience in that sort of work? In medical or physiological chemistry?”
“Yes, sir.”
“To what extent?”
“To a very great extent in medicolegal cases, poison and bloodstain cases.”
“Have you been called upon as to that branch of science in the trial of cases?”
“Yes, sir.”
“To what extent?”
“I don’t know, sir. Several hundred, I should think.”
“Large number of capital cases?”
“Yes, sir.”
“When was your attention, professor, first called to this matter?”
On the fifth of August last year, I received by express a box which was unopened. I opened the box and found in it four preserve jars, one of which was labeled Milk of August 3rd, 1892; the other, the second, was labeled Milk of August 4th, 1892; the third tag was labeled Stomach of Andrew J. Borden; the fourth was labeled Stomach of Mrs. Andrew J. Borden. These tags were tied closely about the neck of the bottles, with strings, the strings being sealed. I opened the jars simply by cutting the strings, leaving the seals intact.
I first examined the jar marked Stomach of Mrs. Andrew J. Borden. The jar was opened and the stomach removed. I found what was apparently a stomach — so far as the external appearance was concerned — of perfectly normal appearance. And it was unopened, a ligature, or string, a cord being tied about the upper and lower end of the stomach. Surgically unopened, I mean. I cut the ligatures and opened the stomach myself while it was fresh, shortly after I received it, and removed the contents into a separate vessel and thoroughly examined the inner surface of the stomach which I found to be, so far as I could determine, perfectly healthy in appearance. There was no evidence of the action of any irritant whatever.
The contents of the stomach were then examined and their quantity noted to be about eleven ounces. It was of semisolid consistency, consisting of at least four-fifths solid food and not more than one-fifth — I should say probably not more than one-tenth — of liquid, of water. And upon examination of those contents of the stomach, I found them to consist of partially digested starch, like wheat starch such as would be found in bread or cake or any other food in the making of which wheat flour is used.
There was also a large quantity of partially digested meat — muscular fiber — with the food and a considerable quantity of oil and some pieces of bread and cake. Some of the pieces of meat were quite sizable pieces — as large, for instance, as a whole pea. And one or two pieces were larger than that — as large as the end of my forefinger — so that their nature was very readily determined.
In addition to this, there was a large number of vegetable pulp cells which resembled those of some fruit, or a pulpy vegetable such as boiled potato. Or an apple or pear. And there was also an undigested skin of a vegetable or of a fruit, one piece of which I have here. It looks like the red skin of an apple or pear.
So far as anything could be determined from the appearance of the food, it was undergoing the normal stomach digestion. And from the quantity of the food in the stomach, it would — if the digestion had progressed normally in the individual before death — indicate a period of approximately somewhere from two to three hours of digestion from the last meal taken, possibly a little longer than that.
That was the stomach of Mrs. Borden.
The character of the food found in the stomach of Mr. Borden differed from that in the stomach of Mrs. Borden in that there was very much less of it, and that it consisted mostly of water and contained only a very small quantity of solid food. This would indicate that the digestion — had it gone on normally, at the normal rate — in the stomach of Mr. Borden was much further advanced than that in the case of Mrs. Borden, since nearly all of the solid food had been expelled from the stomach into the intestine. It would make it, therefore, somewhere in the neighborhood of four hours, say from three — anywhere from three and a half to four and a half hours, the digestion.