Category Archives: Butchery on Bond Street: Essays
Listen to Joe Franklin interviewing me on Bloomberg Radio
Joe Franklin did a terrific interview on Bloomberg Radio in the summer of 2007. Listen in at http://www.adrive.com/home/downloadfile/200602689
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Gold In Them Thar’ Hills…
Back at the start of this year I received the email I’d been waiting for. Out of the blue, a woman from San Diego, California surfaced identifying herself as Emma Cunningham’s great-great-grandaughter. Sure I said to myself… Another notoriety seeker. But like a good historian, I followed it through. Cunningham is a mighty common name, […]
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Something Borrowed, Something Blue
Emma Cunningham’s cell in the Tombs was far from the least comfortable accomodation in that storied Demotic edifice. With comfortable furniture and many meals brought in, there she schemed and plotted out a critical path to gain revenge and recompense for the wrongs done her by Harvey Burdell. My sweet prison cage at Green-Wood probably […]
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Dressed to Kill
By the autumn of 1856 Emma Cunningham had all but given up on Harvey Burdell making good on his marital promises. One of her boarders, a bearded, balding fellow named John Eckel, was all too eager to lend a sympathetic ear to his landlady. Eckel was a bachelor, like Burdell, a middle-aged man with little […]
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X Marks the Spot
Little tangible remains on earth to summon up the somber history of Dr. Harvey Burdell and Emma Hempstead Cunningham other than their final resting places at Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery. These unmarked plots and the gravesites of many other players in Butchery on Bond Street continue to transport me to a place in which I love […]
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A Sore Loser
In Chapter 9 of Butchery on Bond Street, I’ve offered glimpses, both from real life as well as from a contemporary novella, into the gambling underworld that formed a vital part of the downtown demi-monde which Harvey Burdell inhabited. Burdell’s game was faro, but he acted as dealer, eliminating any financial risk for himself while […]
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I am the Resurrection and the Life
Abutting the north side of James Renwick Jr.’s lacy Gothic Grace Church at Broadway and Tenth Street sits the Rectory. Set back from Broadway by a manicured greensward, the matching stone offices are entered via a curving flagstone path. You might as well be in mid-19th century Britain at one of the innumerable such churchyards […]
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The Locus Delicti Still Stands on Bond Street… almost!
It was a chilly December day in 2001, a full year or more into my project, a day spent running hither and thither between archives and courthouses. Dusk had descended and I was headed home from the East 77th Street subway station. My route took me past a real estate office on 78th Street and […]
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A Walk around Bond Street Way Back Then
Seeing history before one’s very eyes is always thrilling. After discovering the sordid story behind Butchery on Bond Street, I quickly made my way downtown, hoping I’d find the house where Harvey Burdell met his gruesome end. No such luck. The little townhouse was probably torn down before the start of the 20th century. A […]
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