Butchery on Bond Street - Sexual Politics and The Burdell-Cunningham Case in Ante-bellum New York - Hardcover

Benjamin Feldman

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0979517508 ISBN 13: 9780979517501

Publisher: New York Wanderer Press in association with The Green-Wood Cemetery Historic Fund, 2007

Synopsis

On the morning of January 31, 1857, Harvey Burdell's lifeless corpse was found in a pool of gore on the floor of his dentistry office in his home at 31 Bond Street in New York City. His ex-lover and landlady of the house was immediately accused of his murder in a case that filled the headlines for months on end. Emma Cunningham's desperate attempts to force the playboy bachelor to marry her and provide a home for the widow and her five children captured the attention of New Yorkers and people across America, just as OJ Simpson has in our times. The murder of an upper-middle class professional in the sanctity of his own home, coupled with the accused murderess' unceasing efforts to wreak vengeance and gain recompense for her rape and an involuntary abortion suffered at the hands of the murder victim form an unbelievable tale, infamous in its day and for decades thereafter, but now long forgotten.

About this title

About the Author

Benjamin Feldman has lived and worked in New York City for the past thirty-eight years. After retiring in 2000 from a successful career in real estate and law, Ben turned to the full-time pursuit of his true love, New York City history. His essays about New York and about Yiddish culture have appeared on-line in The New Partisan Review and Ducts magazine, as well as in his blog, The New York Wanderer. Butchery on Bond Street is Ben's first full-length work

From the Inside Flap

Ben Feldman vividly recreates New York City in the 1850s as the setting for a brutal and bloody murder which still has the power to shock. His meticulous historical research goes beyond the headlines of the day and brings to life a memorable cast of characters with their ambitions and desperations laid bare. A widow with overwhelming emotional and financial needs, a dentist with a successful practice and a shady private life: these and others lived and died in a Bond Street townhouse on a block that looks much the same today as it did 150 years ago. Feldman navigates the gender politics of the case and offers expert guidance on the legal complexities of murder and money. It s a splendid and gripping read. - Patricia Cline Cohen, author of The Murder of Helen Jewett On a walk through Greenwood Cemetery, Ben Feldman fell down the rabbit hole of history. He landed in 1857, the year Dr. Harvey Burdell was murdered. With a historian s accuracy and a writer s flair he has unraveled a murder mystery as torrid and intriguing as anything Agatha Christie or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle could have conceived. In Butchery on Bond Street Feldman reveals the human interplay of good (and mostly bad) intentions as he fleshes out the story of Burdell and Emma Hempstead Cunningham s deadly affair. The book reads with the pulsing drive of a mystery story that unravels secrets of the human soul while it paints a rich and unforgettable portrait of nineteenth century New York. - Steve Zeitlin, Executive Director of City Lore, Inc.

Reviews

In January, 1857, Harvey Burdell, a dentist with a taste for lowlife, was found stabbed to death in his quarters, on Bond Street, igniting one of the most famous murder scandals in New York City’s history. Suspicion immediately fell upon Burdell’s mistress (and landlady), Emma Cunningham, with whom he had been arguing violently over his ongoing refusal to marry her. The newspapers covered the case in salacious detail, and, at Cunningham’s trial, more than twelve times the usual number of prospective jurors were summoned, so that the case could be heard without prejudice. Feldman collates popular accounts with archival research-—the coroner, he finds, brought witnesses to the murder site and interrogated them in Burdell’s dentist’s chair—and tells the story like a gaslight-era episode of "Law & Order."
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Edition details

• Publisher: New York Wanderer Press in association with The Green-Wood Cemetery Historic Fund
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0979517508
• ISBN 13: 9780979517501
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 299