Dr. John W. Coughlin, Mayor of Fall River, said that on Saturday evening following the Borden murder he went to the house with the marshal; there was a large crowd present and he instructed the marshal to disperse the crowd; it was done; in the house the first person he saw was Miss Emma; then he saw Lizzie and Mr. Morse. “We all went into the parlor where I said, ‘I have a request to make of the family, and that is that you remain in the house for a few days, since I think it would be best for you all.’ Lizzie asked, ‘Why, is there anybody in this house suspected?’ and I said, ‘Well, perhaps Mr. Morse can answer better, as his experience of last evening might tend to convince him that somebody in the house was suspected;’ then Emma said, ‘We have tried to keep it from her the best we could,’ and Lizzie said, ‘Well, if I am suspected I am ready to go at any time;’ then Miss Lizzie, in answer to my questions, told where she was when the murders occurred; Miss Emma then said she wanted us to do everything we could for them, after I had told them to call on me for any protection needed.”
Mrs. Hannah H. Gifford said: “I am a cloak maker and did work for the Bordens. I made a sack for Lizzie in March, 1892, and had a talk with her about her stepmother. I spoke, and called Mrs. Borden, ‘mother.’ She said, ‘Don’t call her mother, she is only my stepmother, and she is a mean, hateful old thing;’ I said ‘Oh Lizzie, don’t say that,’ and then she said she always kept apart from her, and ate her meals alone.”
The evidence which Miss Anna H. Borden (not a relative) was about to give in relation to something she had heard the prisoner say about her stepmother was excluded.