Have you any patience with any man who will tell you that Lizzie stood at that door that morning like a marble statue, without any feeling? I have told you about Mrs. Borden. All those three people were sick in the house on Tuesday, including Lizzie. It was in August weather, and whether they had eaten something or the weather had caused it, we do not know, but the government seems to be floundering around with the idea that because Bridget was not sick, they had been poisoned. There was talk about poison, and poison was feared in the family, because all had been made sick. Then they say for some reason, I do not know what, that Miss Lizzie went downstairs in the cellar that Thursday night. There had been people there examining the rooms and looking over the bodies, and there was water in the pitcher up in her room, and people had been washing there during the day, that Mrs. Holmes said, “If I should stay there all night I should want the slop-pail emptied.”
But that house was surrounded by policemen, and Officer Hyde was there, and Miss Lizzie had a full-grown kerosene lamp in her hand and the windows were all open with ample opportunity for observers outside to see in and those within the house knew that policemen were all around so that there was nothing concealed. Now, a person who is going to do anything to cover up crime will not carry an electric light with him. The criminal goes into the dark to do his dark deed. Miss Lizzie did not see anybody, though they say Officer Ferguson was in front, but he is not brought forward, and if he were he could not see through two high board partitions. That would tax the energy and perspicacity of even a Fall River policeman. Then they say she burned a dress. Well, the general thought in the mind of everybody is that if a person burns up anything in connection with some important transaction, he does it to get it out of the way for the purpose of avoiding observation. That is natural. The government stakes its case on that dress.
The government says: “You gave us up the blue dress that lies before me. That is not the dress. You practically commit a falsehood by giving us that.” The defendant says that this is the dress. The government says we want that bedford cord, and if we had that bedford cord we should know all about it, and you burned the bedford cord. Now, let us look at it. There is a dispute here, a disagreement, not intentional, but unavoidable, among the persons who saw what Lizzie had on that morning, some of them saying that she had on this very dress, or a dark blue dress and another, and Mrs. Churchill speaking of it as a light blue coming almost up to a bay blue, or something a good deal lighter than this.