Dr. Michael Kelly

The Borden house was surrounded by doctors on the average day.  Dr. Chagnon lived behind #92, back on Third Street but was not home at the time of the murders.  He had been called away and Lucy Collette sent to his offices to tell patients he could not attend them on the morning of August 4th.  Dr. Bowen who lived across the street from the Bordens was making his rounds when Bridget Sullivan, the Borden’s maid knocked frantically on the door.  Just next door-one house south on Second Street was Dr. Michael Kelly, a specialist in pediatric medicine, who was also not home that morning.  Andrew Borden was, in any event, well beyond the ministrations of any doctor by the time his body was discovered.

The Kelly house still exists, and is currently for sale.  Dr. Kelly and his young wife Caroline, who was expecting a baby at the time of the murders, became much-beloved figures in the city’s social circles. By 1906 they were living on Third Street.  The Kellys are buried in Saint Patrick’s Cemetery.

Gone Fishing in Marion

 

 

G  O  N  E     S  L  E  U  T  H  I  N  G   !!!Warps and Wefts will return on Wednesday, April 30th.

Lizzie Live this Sunday

Sunday, April 20th @ 3:00 p.m

LIZZIE BORDEN LIVE
. . . THINK YOU KNOW HER . . .THINK AGAIN
THE LEGEND COMES TO LIFE
Winner 2007 JACOBY AWARD:
Most Outstanding Performance by an Actress for Lizzie Borden Live

“Dalton is nothing less than superb in her depiction of the character,as her Lizzie is alternating sweet, innocent, witty and savagely murderous.  The audience is left to decide which Lizzie is the real one.” 

Ed Wismer, Cape May Star and Wave

Written & performed by:  Jill Dalton
Directed by:  Jack McCullough
Original Music by:  Larry Hochman

78th Street Theatre Lab
236 West 78th Street
2nd floor
(Sorry, no latecomers admitted.)

(Between B’way & Amsterdam/next door to Stand-up New York)
#1 train to 79th Street

Tickets  $20.00  (mention ‘pears’ receive $5 off)

Reservations : LIZZIEBORDENLIVE@GMAIL.com

Tell your friends!!!

Check out Lizzie’s Web Site:  WWW.LIZZIEBORDENLIVE.COM

Lizzie Borden Live was commissioned by The East Lynne Theater Company where it premiered in Cape May, NJ in 2007.

Salem Witch?

 +=  ?????????

Salem is rumored to be the new hot spot for weekending for the Boston crowd but who would have thought it might become a venue for Lizzie Borden during the annual Salem Haunted Happening Madness in October.  Word has it that the Essex Street  Newmarket Gallery will be the hot spot for Lizzie to be hanging out come October 2008.  What would a Fall River girl have to say to all of this? 

http://www.thesaleminsider.com/2008/04/07/nightlife-in-salem/

Lizzie Borden Live-Back by Popular Demand!

Next 4 performances: 

LIZZIE BORDEN LIVE
. . . THINK YOU KNOW HER . . .THINK AGAIN
THE LEGEND COMES TO LIFE

 

Winner 2007 JACOBY AWARD:
Most Outstanding Performance by an Actress for Lizzie Borden Live

“Dalton is nothing less than superb in her depiction of the character,
as her Lizzie is alternating sweet, innocent, witty and savagely
murderous.  The audience is left to decide which Lizzie is the real
one.”  Ed Wismer, Cape May Star and Wave

Written & performed by:  Jill Dalton
Directed by:  Jack McCullough
Original Music by:  Larry Hochman

Sunday, April 20th @ 3:00 p.m.
Sunday, June 8th @ 3:00 p.m.
(Sorry, no latecomers admitted.)
78th Street Theatre Lab
236 West 78th Street
(Between B’way & Amsterdam/next door to Stand-up New York)
#1 train to 79th Street
Tickets  $20.00  (mention ‘pears’ receive $5 off)

Reservations : LIZZIEBORDENLIVE@GMAIL.com

Also selected as part of the Six Figures Theatre Company’s 6th Annual
Artists of Tomorrow Festival with two performances.

Friday, May 2nd @ 9 pm
Sunday, May 4th @ 3 pm
The West End Theatre
(Church of St. Paul & St. Andrew)
  263 West 86th Street
(bet. B’wy & West End Ave.)

For tickets call 212-868-4444 or visit www.smarttix.com

Tell your friends!!!
Check out Lizzie’s Web Site:  WWW.LIZZIEBORDENLIVE.COM
Lizzie Borden Live was commissioned by The East Lynne Theater Company
where it premiered in Cape May, NJ in 2007.

The Psychic Solution?

Selling like hotcakes off the shelves of Phantom Book Shop in Ventura is Richard and Deb Senate’s latest excusion into the psychic world - a solution to the Borden case. Deb has the gift of picking up impressions from holding objects from a crime scene.  The couple is now tackling England’s own Lizzie Borden- Jack the Ripper.  For ordering information and more on this title, visit their website at

http://ghost-pod.com/2008/04/04/richard-and-debbie-senates-book-on-lizzie-borden-ax-murder-mystery-is-selling-extremely-well.aspx

Lizzie’s Spurned Friend

 

Alice Russell, the former Borden neighbor and close family friend who testified about Lizzie burning a dress in the kitchen woodstove the day after the funeral services for Andrew and Abby Borden, lived very close to French Street and Maplecroft years after the acquittal. Miss Alice Russell, who was a bookkeeper, clerk and sewing teacher over the course of her employed years in the city, moved into the house above, #18 Hillside, with her mother in 1909 and continued to reside  in the two-family home until 1929.  

Hillside is perhaps two blocks from French Street and Lizzie’s Maplecroft home. Lizzie and her sister Emma moved into Maplecroft in September of 1893, the autumn after Lizzie’s acquittal. Lizzie resided there until her death in 1927.  Older sister Emma left Maplecroft and her sister for reasons not entirely known in 1905, and is rumored never to have been in her sister’s physical presence again.

Alice Russell earned Lizzie’s contempt after giving the damaging testimony about the burnt dress, and was no longer one of Lizzie’s intimate friends forever afterward.  With the two ladies living in such proximity, there must have been some awkward moments as they passed on the street over that eighteen year period.

Alice Russell spent her days from 1930 until she died in 1941 at the Home for the Aged, now The Adams House, on Highland Avenue.  She is buried in Beech Grove Cemetery in nearby Westport.

Adams House today on Highland Avenue

Friends of Oak Grove in the News

Yesterday’s Fall River Herald News featured a story on the new Friends group which has begun a program of planting trees at the historic Victorian cemetery. 

 http://www.heraldnews.com/town_info/history/x1565510740

Oak Grove was begun in 1855 with a 47 acre parcel purchased from Dr. Nathan Durfee who sold it to the city for $200 per acre.  The entry arch was erected in 1873. The site http://oakgrovecemetery.wordpress.com features the Borden-Almy plot, Borden-related gravesites, and information on the Borden’s funeral.  Over 500 “hits” have come in over the past 24 hours to the site, with a lion’s share of visitors reading about how to become a member- with the Borden-related information a close second.  Lizzie still holds a fascination among the city’s population.

New photo joins other “Lizzies”

The recently-found photograph of a young Lizzie in a straw hat has joined the other known photos on the bookshelf in the sitting room at the Borden house.  The room also contains the most famous one of Lizzie in Newport after the acquittal posed standing behind a chair- the only photo where she looks directly out at the photographer. 

 Some say she looks like the cat that swallowed the canary.  The Swansea Historical Society houses the new photo of little Lizzie, which is the youngest photo of Lizzie found to date.

Big doings in the neighborhood

 

Lots of action in the neighborhood this week.  Dr. Kelly’s house next door to #92 is for sale along with the shop attached to the house next door to it.  Saint Mary’s across the street is being sandblasted and stones re-pointed, and work is continuing at an accelerated pace across the street on the new courthouse.  Hope the dust settles before August 4th!

Old St. Mary’s Church