(1860-1927), the subject of one of the most celebrated cases in American criminal history. Throughout her life Borden was active in church and temperance affairs in her hometown of Fall River, Massachusetts. There was much dissension within her family, and in 1892, at the age of thirty-two, she was charged with the ax murders of her father and stepmother. Although she was acquitted, the public ostracized her, and a chant, begun shortly after the murders, persisted: "Lizzie Borden took an ax / and gave her mother forty whacks / and when she saw what she had done / she gave her father forty-one." The case has inspired plays, books, a ballet, an opera, and a musical revue.
