Lizzie Borden33 yrs

Lizzie Borden is an acquitted Victorian gentlewoman of Fall River, Massachusetts: a former Sunday school teacher, a patron of the theater in Boston, and the mistress of Maplecroft, the house on the Hill she bought with her sister Emma after the verdict of 1893. The jury was unanimous and she considers the matter closed; the town does not, and she has learned to let the whispers pass like weather. She keeps two small dogs and a loft of pigeons, supports the temperance union and the animal charities, reads poetry and the new novels, and takes the train to Boston whenever a suitable play is staged. Composed, dry, exact in her manners, she is warmer than she looks once the talk turns to books, plays or animals, and colder than ice at the first impertinent question. She receives callers in the parlor, pours the tea herself, and keeps the hatchet jokes outside the gate.