15. Lizzie Borden Took a Labrys
History is Gay
Leigh Pfeffer
4.6 • 536 Ratings
🗓️ 17 September 2018
⏱️ 84 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Way back in the first episode, Leigh and Gretchen formed a historical 'murder wives' ship starting with Anne Bonny; in this episode, they take a closer look at murder wife #2: Lizzie Borden! That's right folks, she too may very well have had a thing for the ladies as well as possibly murdering her father and stepmother. Just how queer was she? Did she have an affair with her maid and her stepmother caught them? Why was she acquitted and what was society like for a single, Victorian woman? Find out on this week's History is Gay!
Outline
0:00 – Introduction
3:30 – Content Warnings
5:07 – Historical Context: 19th Century Victorian Society
21:57 – Who Were They? Bio Time
30:55-31:56 – Content Warning Break: Mention of Incest
35:34 – Motives, The Murders, and Trial
58:24 – Why Do We Think They're Gay?
1:07:10 – Fun Segment: Word of the Week: Spinsters
1:13:55 – Fun Segment: Pop Culture Tie-In
1:16:34 – How Gay were They?
1:20:32 – Closing and Where to Find Us Online
Want to help us continue to make the show? Support us on Patreon and get awesome goodies, behind-the-scenes access, special minisodes, and more!
Also now you can get super cool merch in our store! Shirts, hoodies, totes, and more!
Find our full list of sources and bonus content at www.historyisgaypodcast.com. Get at us on twitter @historyisgaypod, tumblr at historyisgaypodcast, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts! Don't forget to rate and review so more folks can see the show!
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to History is Gay, a podcast that examines the underappreciated and overlooked, queer ladies, gents, and gentle enbies that have always been there in the unexplored corners of history. |
| 0:11.7 | Because history has never been as straight as you think. My name is Gretchen. |
| 0:32.4 | And I'm Lee. |
| 0:33.7 | And in this episode, we're going to be talking about Lizzie Borden. |
| 0:38.9 | My murder wife. |
| 0:42.7 | Probably the most well-known person so far other than like Anne Bonnie, just iconic. |
| 0:49.0 | Oh, don't you mean part two of my OT3? |
| 0:53.7 | Sorry, part three of my OT3 sorry part three of my OT3 between ann bonnie and bessie smith and |
| 0:58.6 | now lizzie borden right yes we are we are rounding out the trio finally yes yeah um yeah if |
| 1:07.2 | somehow you've been living under a rock in terms of like popular culture references and you don't know who Lizzie Borden was, or what the heck we're talking about, surprise, we're going to go into a whole bunch of detail. |
| 1:17.9 | But in general, she was a lady in 19th century New England who was part of a scandalous murder trial. |
| 1:27.1 | And you probably are familiar with the schoolyard chant, |
| 1:30.5 | Lizzie Borden took an axe, gave her mother 40 wax. |
| 1:33.6 | When she saw what she had done, she gave her father 41. |
| 1:37.0 | It was a huge, incredibly sensationalized trial, |
| 1:40.5 | and she ended up getting acquitted, |
| 1:42.8 | and she's since been relegated to the annals of crazy, awesome, feminist and true crime history. |
| 1:50.9 | Right. |
| 1:51.2 | I mean, aside from, I would say, like, OJ Simpson, she might be one of the most famous, like, true crime stories in America. |
| 1:58.8 | Yeah, absolutely. |
| 2:00.0 | There's actually, there's actually a book that takes both of those things and kind of like brings the facts together on them. Oh, that's interesting. Oh, that's like, oh, here's all of these different similarities. It's really interesting. Um, a person named Spike Trotman on Twitter did a whole, um, a whole Twitter thread on Lizzie Borden and then closed it out with |
| 2:17.8 | like the back of this one book and it has like, Lizzie Borden and OJ Simpson, here are the vague facts about the cases that are very, you know, that line up. That's pretty cool. Yeah. So, so one might reasonably ask why we're talking about Lizzie Borden and, and you'll find out. Oh. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Leigh Pfeffer, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Leigh Pfeffer and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.