If you’ve heard the name Lizzie Borden, it was probably from the rhyme heard on playgrounds or at sleepovers:
Lizzie Borden took an axe,and gave her mother 40 whacks.When she saw what she had done,she gave her father 41.
The grisly song or rhyme was not originally intended for children, but the story of the Borden murders spread through the nation like wildfire in the late 1890s. By the turn of the century, young and old alike believed that Lizzie Borden had hacked up her parents. However, the actual facts of the case were lost among the many retellings, and today the case has become mostly myth and legend…