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19th-century scandal laid to rest

By David Freedlander, amNewYork Staff Writer | dfreedlander@am-ny.com

September 18, 2007

Page from Benjamin Feldman's book BUTCHERY ON BOND STREET with a photo of Harvey Burdell. (Handout Photo / September 17, 2007)

It might be one of the most bizarre relationships -- and murders -- in New York City history. And it took only a mere 150 years for it to come full circle.

The victim and the alleged killer in the gruesome case that captivated New Yorkers in the mid-19th century will finally receive headstones today on their unmarked graves at Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery.

During a crime wave in the winter of 1857, Harvey Burdell, a prominent dentist who lived at 31 Bond St. in Greenwich Village, was found in his office strangled and stabbed 15 times.

Suspicion soon fell on his mistress, Emma Cunningham, a 36-year-old widow who Burdell had taken into his home along with her five children.

"She needed a wealthy new husband willing to take on five children," said Benjamin Feldman, author of "Butchery on Bond Street," a new book about the case. "And she made a bad choice."

Burdell, according to Feldman, "took ruthless advantage" of Cunningham\], routinely raping her, impregnating her two times, and twice performing an abortion on her with his hands.

Still, she needed the money and respectability a husband would bring, and so, when Burdell refused to do right by her, she hired an imposter to stand in for him at a wedding ceremony. When this ruse failed, she took to violence.

"I never in my life have heard a story that incorporated so much dysfunction and sociopathic behavior between a man and woman," Feldman said.

It got worse. After the 46-year-old dentist's death, Cunningham maintained that she was entitled to his fortune because she was carrying his child.

She stuffed pillows under her petticoats to make herself look pregnant but was eventually caught when she sent a friend to "borrow" a newborn from Bellevue Hospital to pretend it was her own. Cunningham was acquitted at trial, moved to California for 25 years but eventually settled back in New York, where she died in 1887.

At a time when society men routinely took mistresses and then cast them aside, the murder of a prominent dentist at the hands of his girlfriend sent shockwaves through the city.

"New York at that time was still a fairly small town, and many people knew each other," said Jeff Richman, historian of Green-Wood Cemetery.

"Just like 9/11 told us about our world and how dangerous it was, this murder told people it wasn't quite as safe to live in New York City as they thought it was. A lot of people got guns for themselves afterwards and started to carry them on the street."

Like most wealthy and middle class Protestants of the day, they were both buried in Green-Wood Cemetery, a few hundred yards apart, their presence unacknowledged there until today. Their graves went unmarked, hers because of destitution and his because of greed -- that of his family, which squabbled over his estate.

"People like to think they are remembered and there is an element of immortality to their lives," Richman said. "Poor Dr. Burdell and Mrs. Cunningham have been lying in unmarked graves all these years, and we're finally able to commemorate their lives."

Comparing the frenzy that trial produced to the O.J. Simpson case 135 years later, Feldman thought it was significant how little had actually changed in the relationship between the sexes in the big city.

"I don't know if life is all that different today," he said. "Take a look at Craigslist. The technology is different, but you still see women searching for sugar daddies and all that kind of stuff. The only difference is that in the middle of the 19th century it was OK to do that."