SPILLED.

In 1892, Andrew and Abby Borden were murdered with a hatchet in their Fall River home, and Lizzie Borden was the only family member in the house. We go minute by minute through the day of the murders, line up the suspects, and dig into how a defense built on “nothing feminine about it” got her acquitted. Lizzie Borden took an ax… or did she?

Sources:
Scholarly
[1] Filetti, Jean S. "From Lizzie Borden to Lorena Bobbitt: Violent Women and Gendered Justice." Journal of American Studies 35, no. 3 (2001): 471–84 — JSTOR. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27557007 Peer-reviewed; strong.
Journalism and reference
[2] The Unsolved Mystery of Lizzie Borden and the Grisly Fall River Axe Murders — BBC Culture. https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20260914-the-unsolved-mystery-of-lizzie-borden-and-the-grisly-fall-river-axe-murders Reputable outlet; article's URL date is as given in your notes.
[3] Lizzie Borden: biographies and 1892–1927 timeline (compiled by UMKC School of Law students) — crimearchives.net. https://crimearchives.net/1893_borden/html/bios.html Useful but not peer-reviewed; includes an impossible date ("Nov. 31") and a death-age error.
Primary documents (as transcribed in your research notes)
[4] Inquest testimony of Lizzie Borden, Aug 9–11, 1892 — Fall River, MA inquest transcript. https://famous-trials.com/lizzieborden/1444-inquest The transcript pasted in your notes did not include a source URL; this is the inquest page cited by the US Ghost Adventures piece. Confirm the match.
[5] Trial testimony of Bridget Sullivan, June 7, 1893 — Trial transcript, Fall River/New Bedford. Source site not given in your notes; confirm before final citation.
Commercial blog (weakest tier)
[6] Lizzie Borden myths-and-facts article (title and URL not included in your notes) — US Ghost Adventures blog (usghostadventures.com), which promotes tours and stays at the Lizzie Borden House. Commercial; use for myth-busting leads only and verify against the sources it cites.
Cited within that article (not independently verified by me): EBSCO Research Starters, Lizzie Borden (ebsco.com/research-starters/history/lizzie-borden); Library of Congress Chronicling America guide (guides.loc.gov/chronicling-america-lizzie-borden/selected-articles) and newspaper issues sn84024546 (1892-08-05), sn94052989 (1892-08-13 and 1893-06-21), sn90059522 (1893-06-17), sn84025891 (1893-06-10); Biography.com, Lizzie Borden's isolated life after the trial; Britannica, Lizzie Borden; Fall River Herald News, myths busted (2022); History.com, 9 Things You May Not Know About Lizzie Borden; Famous Trials, the inquest; Criminal Element, 11 Facts About Lizzie Borden Debunked.
[7] Lizzie Borden — Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lizzie_Borden Used only to cross-check the age at death (66).
[8] Lizzie Borden (1860–1927) memorial — Find a Grave. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/115/lizzie-borden Crowd-sourced; used only for burial date (June 4, 1927) and plot.
[9] Borden Funerals — lizziebordenwarpsandwefts.com. https://lizziebordenwarpsandwefts.com/october-mutton-eaters-online/ Fan/history blog; surfaced in search, not read in full; funeral accounts vary across results.
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In 1688, a Dutch king took the English throne, banned French wine and brandy, and then let basically anyone distill gin at home. What could go wrong?

This week we're spilling Gin Mania, which historians call the Gin Craze and Londoners called "mother's ruin." By 1730, the city had more than 7,000 gin shops. Many of them were run by women, who were shut out of most other work, and some sold gin anonymously through cat-shaped "puss and mew" slot machines. Birth rates dropped, infant deaths climbed, and crime spiked. Meanwhile, doctors decided gin was full of tiny sharp structures stabbing your body's fibers from the inside.

We get into Hogarth's Gin Lane vs. Beer Street propaganda, why the Gin Act of 1736 flopped and fed a black market in spirits cut with turpentine and sulfuric acid, and how the 1751 crackdown finally ended the craze. Plus: how Victorian gin palaces may have given us the modern bar, and why Gordon's is still on shelves today.
Our last non-spooky episode before Halloween. Pour yourself a beer. History suggests you should.
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Mosquitoes are the deadliest animal on Earth and they've been shaping human history since long before recorded time. This week, Delaney sits down with SPILLED. team member Jacob to trace malaria's fingerprints across evolution, colonization, the slave trade, the British Empire, and a WWII research push second only to the Manhattan Project. Two vaccines later, they're still winning. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We're covering seven real female warriors and soldiers across four continents and almost 1,900 years of history — women who disguised themselves as men to fight, and women who didn't have to. Featuring Hannah Snell (the British soldier who enlisted to hunt down her husband), Sarah Rosetta Wakeman (a Civil War soldier who kept her secret to the grave), Nadezhda Durova (the Russian cavalry officer awarded the St. George Cross), the Trung sisters (who led an army of 80,000 to overthrow Han China), Mai Bhago (the Sikh warrior who turned back an army of deserters), and Yaa Asantewaa (the Ashanti queen mother who led her people to war). Plus: what Deborah Sampson's story has in common with all of them.
A history podcast episode on women warriors, female soldiers, and women in war — from the American Revolution and the Civil War to the Napoleonic Wars, the Mughal-Sikh Wars, and the Ashanti Empire.

Sources:
Hannah Snell:
Hannah Snell — Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_Snell
Forces News: “Hannah Snell, A Female Soldier In Disguise”
Royal Marines History: “Hannah Snell Joins the Marines, 1747”
British Tars, 1740–1790: “Hannah Snell, A Woman and a Marine”
The Hunterian Blog: “Hannah Snell — Cross Dressing in the 1700s”
Academic: “Body and Gender Expressed by the Cross-Dressing of Hannah Snell…” (Academia.edu)
Primary: Robert Walker (attrib.), The Female Soldier; or, The Surprising Life and Adventures of Hannah Snell (1750)
Deborah Sampson:
American Battlefield Trust: Deborah Sampson
National Women's History Museum: Deborah Sampson
Massachusetts Historical Society: “Deborah Sampson, Soldier in Disguise”
Paul Revere House: “Quitting the Male Habit” (Revere's 1804 pension letter, digitized at MHS)
Historic New England: “Deborah Sampson, Fighting for Recognition”
Just Teach One: The Female Review (1797) — annotated teaching edition
Hanna Lauren Kawamoto, The Female Soldier: Gender Performance and National Identity (UC Irvine MA thesis, 2025) — open access, escholarship.org/uc/item/5wr4x7h5. Covers Sampson plus Margaret Cochran Corbin & Anna Maria Lane.
Georgina K. Lock, “Honouring the Wound…” Linguaculture, Issue 2 (2011) — open access, covers Snell & Sampson plus Pauline Cushman.
Sarah Rosetta Wakeman:
American Battlefield Trust: Sarah Rosetta Wakeman
Sarah Rosetta Wakeman — Wikipedia
Emerging Civil War: “From History's Shadows — Sarah Rosetta Wakeman”
Lauren Cook Burgess, ed., An Uncommon Soldier: The Civil War Letters of Sarah Rosetta Wakeman… (Oxford University Press, 1994)
DeAnne Blanton & Lauren M. Cook, They Fought Like Demons: Women Soldiers in the American Civil War (LSU Press, 2002)
Nadezhda Durova:
Reddit r/badhistory writeup on Durova scholarship [non-historian source — use with caution]
Ruth Averbach, “The Unmaking of a Man: Aleksandr Aleksandrov/Nadezhda Durova,” Slavic Review (Cambridge Core)
UBC lecture on Soviet-era erasure of the gender identity question (open.library.ubc.ca)
Primary: Nadezhda Durova, The Cavalry Maiden (memoir, various translated editions)
Trung Sisters:
Primary: Book of the Later Han (Fan Ye, 5th c.); Dai Viet Su ky toan thu (Ngo Si Lien, 15th c.)
Keith Weller Taylor (Cornell) — commentary on women's status and the disputed Thi Sach execution narrative [locate specific published piece before recording]
Mai Bhago:
General Sikh history sources — record is thin and contested; flag on air. Recommend a targeted search for Sikh studies journal articles on Mai Bhago / Chali Mukte before recording if a stronger citation is needed.
Synthesis / Institutional Context:
“Monstrous Regiment” — History Today (1793 French decree)
“Women and Military Institutions in Early Modern Europe: A Reconnaissance,” Signs journal
Rudolf Dekker & Lotte van de Pol, The Tradition of Female Transvestism in Early Modern Europe (Macmillan, 1989) — open access copy at Erasmus University repository (repub.eur.nl/pub/16934)

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Human sacrifice gets a bad rap in the history books, and we're here to spill the tea. This week we're digging into who was really practicing ritual sacrifice across history. From Mesopotamia's royal tombs to Aztec blood debts, Celtic wicker men to Japanese seppuku and why the "savage civilization" narrative doesn't hold up.

Sources:
General / Context:
Caldararo, Niccolo. "Human Sacrifice, Capital Punishment, Prisons & Justice." Historical Social Research 41, no. 4 (2016): 322–46.
Løvschal et al. "Human Sacrifice and Value." Antiquity 93, no. 370 (2019).
Schwartz, Glenn M. "The Archaeological Study of Sacrifice." Annual Review of Anthropology 46 (2017): 223–240.
Mesopotamia / Ur:
Recht, Laerke. "Human Sacrifice in the Ancient Near East and Egypt." The Ancient Near East Today 8, no. 2 (2020).
Egypt:
Campbell, Roselyn Anne. Kill Thy Neighbor: Violence, Power, and Human Sacrifice in Ancient Egypt. PhD diss., UCLA, 2019.
Nielsen, Nicky. "In Ancient Egypt, Human Sacrifice and Shabti Figures Ensured an Afterlife of Servitude." Atlas Obscura, October 17, 2023.
Celtic / Druid / Greco-Roman:
Caesar, Julius. The Conquest of Gaul. Translated by F. P. Long, 2005.
Allen, Stephen. Celtic Warrior — 300 BC–AD 100. Osprey Publishing, 2001.
Davies, John. The Celts: Prehistory to Present Day. Sterling Publishing, 2005.
"Human Sacrifice." Digital Medievalist, Opinionated Celtic FAQs. digitalmedievalist.com
Aztec:
Pennock, Caroline Dodds. "Mass Murder or Religious Homicide?" Historical Social Research 37, no. 3 (2012): 276–302.
Neiburger, E. J. "The American Ball Game Court." Central States Archaeological Journal 62, no. 2 (2015): 74–77.
Japan:
Roberts, Michael, and Arthur Saniotis. "Introduction: Empowering the Body and 'Noble Death.'" Social Analysis 50, no. 1 (2006): 7–24.
India:
BBC News. "India Outrage after Man Acquitted over Wife's Sati Death." September 10, 2024.
Chakravorty, Ranes C. "British Abolish Suttee in India." EBSCO Research Starters, 2023.
Dhungel, Suraj. "Sati System in Hinduism." Academic Voices 8 (2018): 95–99.
The New York Times. "Suttee in India Still Occurs Despite British Prohibition." January 1, 1928.

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