The Fall River Tragedy: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

The Fall River Tragedy, credited to Edwin H. Porter, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of The Fall River Tragedy by Edwin H. Porter. Read in English by Lynne T The story of how Lizzie Borden supposedly murdered her parents has passed into American folklore, partly thanks to the albeit inaccurate playground rhyme, "Lizzie Borden took an axe, and gave her mother 40 whacks. When she saw what she had done, she gave her father 41." Here we have the 'true' story, as reported by the local police reporter who attended the trial and lived only streets away from the Borden home with his young wife. After the trial, Porter 'disappeared' and it was widely speculated he had either been murdered or bribed to disappear in order to suppress the book. His reappearance some time later put paid to the first theory. After his death at age 39 from tuberculosis, a new theory emerged, that he had been away for treatment while keeping his illness secret. Meanwhile, the trial itself was noteworthy for several reasons: it was one of the first to be followed by nationwide press, providing a template for today's tabloid and cable coverage of major trials; it also had some distinguished personnel: one of the prosecutors, Frank Moody, later became the attorney general of the United States and was appointed to the Supreme Court by President Theodore Roosevelt; and Borden’s defense attorney, George Robinson, was the former governor of Massachusetts. The appearance of Professor Wood of Harvard University was an early use of an expert witness at trial.

Recording facts

• Recording title: The Fall River Tragedy
• Author credits: Edwin H. Porter
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 36
• Listed recording duration: 13:31:28

Catalogue topics

• Crime
• trial
• court
• murderer
• borden
• murders
• axe

Opening tracks: first 24 of 36

1. 00 - Preface — 2:53
2. 01 - Discovery of the Murders — 28:44
3. 02 - Police Searching the Premises — 14:57
4. 03 - The Borden Family — 7:08
5. 04 - Hiram C. Harrington’s Story — 7:36
6. 05 - The Search of the House — 7:53
7. 06 - The Funeral — 5:28
8. 07 - A Reward Offered — 15:21
9. 08 - A Sermon on the Murders — 15:17
10. 09 - Theories Advanced — 11:07
11. 10 - Chapter X — 25:33
12. 11 - Miss Lizzie Borden Arrested — 19:53
13. 12 - Lizzie Borden Pleads 'Not Guilty' — 25:17
14. 13 - The Preliminary Hearing Adjourned — 36:15
15. 14 - Dr. Dolan Cross-Examined — 7:26
16. 15 - Second Day of the Trial — 21:44
17. 16 - Third and Fourth Days of the Trial — 21:39
18. 17 - Fifth Day of the Trial — 27:02
19. 18 - Sixth Day of the Trial — 21:50
20. 19 - District Attorney Knowlton’s Argument. — 20:23
21. 20 - Lizzie A. Borden Indicted — 6:52
22. 21 - The Trickey-McHenry Affair — 35:37
23. 22 - Beginning of the Superior Court Trial — 1:01:08
24. 23 - Third Day of the Trial — 6:30

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Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.