Very interesting read on the Lizzie Borden and the structure of language in its day.
I read the transcript of the Lizzie Borden trial. I am convinced she did it, but the prosecution didn’t have enough evidence to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Might have been a different outcome if the police had today’s scientific tools.
"Of the five persons under the heated roof at 92 Second Street this sultry Aug. 4, 1892, two would not live to see noon. Two others were, in popular opinion, to be absolved of any possible blame for the murders that impended while the mutton broth bubbled on the kitchen stove. One was to live, from this day, another forty-five years with the stain and suspicion of murder upon her, to become a legendary figure of modern crime annals, subject of the grim bit of doggerel that has already survived a half century and which will be repeated fifty years from now:
"Lizzie Borden took an axe
And gave her Mother forty whacks;
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her Father forty-one!"
You can add another twenty years to that prediction.
Meyer Berger must have written this essay some time before its publication. Since at least August 3 he has been in England filing human interest stories about the American invasion of the British Isles. Before that he had a regular column covering local goings-on in New York. I posted one story he filed from Atlanta when "Gone With the Wind" premiered there.