by Jack Finney
Harvey Burdell had "several cousins," the busy Tribune man or men had discovered, "one of whom—a fine, hearty, good-looking young lady," he said admiringly (surely my girl, Demis), "was very warmly attached to the Doctor, and very familiar with him, and frequently interchanged visits. She was at the house on Friday afternoon before the murder, and heard his expressions of disgust toward the woman who now claims to be his widow…."
The Tribune also informed the great public coroner that "Dr. Burdell met Mrs. Cunningham and her daughters at Saratoga, and as he had been acquainted with her husband, and as she was a widow and engaged in the usual business of Saratoga widows, it was not hard to make her acquaintance. It is not impossible," the Tribune man speculated, "that as he had no very exalted opinion of female virtue, he may have made proposals of marriage or something else." Later, the Trib man said, "the widow met with such a mishap as widows have met before…."
Unnamed friends, the Tribune continued, "are very emphatic in their declarations that he never could have married Mrs. Cunningham, and that the whole affair was a fraud—a plot with someone to represent himself as Dr. Burdell, so as to enable her to claim a portion of his property as his widow…." Who this someone might have been the Tribune didn't say, but did suggest that Eckel's "associations, both male and female, have … been of the kind to initiate him into [iniquity]. His female correspondence found in his trunk is most scandalous. A few months ago, when he used to be in the habit of visiting a certain Broadway restaurant in company with a woman from Georgia, his hair and whiskers were thin and light-colored. The man that was married to Mrs. Cunningham had dark whiskers, and some of Mr. Eckel's former acquaintances are surprised to find that his turned dark about the same time…."
As for George Snodgrass, "the wild son of a respectable minister … it is evident that this youth is very much enamored of one of the Cunningham girls, and scandal says that if there is not a secret marriage between them, there ought to be. A free supply of her toilet articles and garments found in his bedroom is thought to afford evidence in this respect…." Play that on your banjo, George.
The supplies for Mrs. Cunningham's party of January 14 "have not yet been paid for—the lady promising that when her rents came in, from the 1st to the 10th of February, she would have plenty of money. It is said that these rents are as mythical as the hundred thousand dollars worth of property which the same woman represented herself to Dr. Burdell to be worth. This Mr. Eckel"—the obsessed reporter continued without pause or paragraph—"seems to have been, if nothing more, a very proper companion for that class of man about town of whom Dr. Thrasher Lyons was a living example. His position in this family is not exactly defined, but it certainly appears to have been a free and easy one." Thrasher Lyons was a name in the recent news—and a splendid name for this—because of his many affairs with women.
All this pretty well took care of everyone at 31 Bond but the servants and Eckel's canaries—except for Daniel Ullman. But Ullman was a practicing attorney, had been a nearly successful candidate for governor of New York, and the Tribune handled him with care. "… though it appears that the Hon. Daniel Ullman had a room in the house … he cannot, of course, be expected to throw any light on the subject."
The Trib wrapped things up by offering its citywide jury a choice of motives: "… feelings of enmity independent of getting possession of [Burdell's] property might be a sufficient inducement for unprincipled people to take a fellow-creature's life, particularly if it could be done in a quiet way with the garrote, so that his body could be hung up and represented as that of a suicide. If this was the intent, the unexpected resistance and overpowering of the garroter, so as to require a resort to the dagger frustrated the plan…."
Or the motive might have been vengeance by "a most vindictive rascal" who "swore that if he lived to get out of prison he would be revenged…." This referred to a Sing Sing prisoner convicted of a forgery by Dr. Burdell's persistence. Had he finished his term, and returned to the city? the Tribune wondered.
Or maybe—and by now I think the Trib was reaching—the murderer was one of the guests at Emma Cunningham's party in January because: "It is charged by public rumor that bad women and worse men were among the guests; and the same busy tongue charges that Mrs. Cunningham's antecedents are not such as belong to a strictly virtuous woman…."
Finally the Tribune warned its readers that they must not prejudge these people, because "we repeat that nothing yet developed tends to implicate any individual sufficient to warrant detention for trial."
The Times took it a little easier, though what they said about the people of 31 Bond Street would give a present-day libel lawyer fits. In the village where young Snodgrass grew up, they said, he "never established a reputation for remarkable steadiness of demeanor, or refinement or delicacy of sentiment; in fact was looked upon by the village as a young gentleman whom sharp discipline would benefit."
And "Emma Augusta Hempstead in her youth was remarkable chiefly for a well-developed, voluptuous form, and more than ordinary powers of fascination. She drew within her toils Mr. George D. Cunningham who … some years ago abandoned his legal spouse… and connected himself with Miss Hempstead." When his wife finally died, "Miss Hempstead, with her offspring, several in number, of which he was the reputed father, again domiciled herself with him." Three years later he died "in a fit," and "it became known that the life of the deceased had been insured for $10,000, which fact, connected with other facts, caused considerable speculation at the time.
"With the death of Mr. Cunningham, the validity of the claim Miss Emma Hempstead made to his effects was discussed, and she then as now produced a marriage certificate to substantiate such a claim. Many of Mr. C.'s friends had heard him say that he was not married. But others had heard him relate how he was married while intoxicated, and was not aware of the fact until the next day when the evidence of it was placed before his eyes. He, it would seem, did not trouble himself much about it afterwards. Mrs. C., released from her alleged tie by death, and with $10,000 at her command, was lost sight of by the public until Saturday last."
Letters had been coming in to the Times. "… The case of Dr. H. Burdell is one in which an investigation of the last impression on the inner coat of the eye ought to be thoroughly made …" wrote J. H. A. Graham.
Mr. W. D. Porter wrote to say that "several months ago—or just after the murder of Burke—I published in the New-York Herald a method of detecting murders by an examination of the eye of the person murdered. I have also addressed several other letters to the Herald on the same subject, which that paper has not published. If Dr. Burdell's murder took place at any time when the room was lit by gas, or by daylight, pass the eyes of Dr. Burdell through the process recommended by me, and the image of the murderer will be seen in the eye—much more perfect than any daguerrotype. Yours truly."
"The juryman's suggestion about the retina of the eye was a good one," wrote "Detector," "but the best way to arrive at the truth is to call up Dr. Burdell's spirit and get him to name his murderers at once…."
Down on Bond Street today, Tuesday, more than a thousand people crowded the walks and streets before number 31, the Times judged; even more people than yesterday. The back parlor where the inquest was about to resume was crowded with "many doctors and chemists … in attendance to learn the result of the proposed examination of the eyes of the murdered man, and of the blood on the sheets, [Ketcham's] shirt, and the towels found in the storeroom."
They began the resumed inquest with Burdell's work-boy, John Burchell, back on the stand to say all over again what had happened the morning he'd discovered the murdered Doctor; but also, this time, to be questioned about Eckel's unusual early departure that morning. John was small, like many a hardworking child of those times, I imagine, and the room was crowded: people couldn't see or hear him well, and it was now that they carried the operating chair down, and the "boy mounted it so that all could see him."
When they'd heard the boy, Coro
ner Connery made an announcement: an analysis would be made of the blood found on the clothing and sheets found in the attic; but: "The physicians with whom I have conversed upon the propriety of an examination of [Burdell's] eyes … all agree that the matter is a farce, that it will amount to nothing." One of the doctors then told the jurors that even if an image of the murderer had been retained in Harvey Burdell's eyes, "it would be impossible so long after death, in consequence of the opacity of the humors of the eye, to detect…." Besides, they had no reason to think such an image had ever existed.
But some of the jurors didn't want to give up the attractive hope of a picture of the murderer's face lying like an undeveloped film inside Burdell's closed eyes upstairs; a couple of them said they didn't see any harm in trying to find it. But a difficulty occurred to a third juror. He said, "The question may arise if the image of a 'dear one' is not likely to be imprinted on the eye as of the person seen in the moment of death." That danger seemed to finish the discussion, and the doctors went upstairs— using Daniel Ullman's old room—to test for blood.
What they found was leaked to the papers that same day. The bloody dagger found in Mrs. Cunningham's room wasn't bloody at all; the spots turned out to be rust. All of Eckel's and Emma Cunningham's clothes that could be found in the house, including boots and shoes, showed no trace of blood. The heap of soiled clothing, sheets, towels, and the like, including Ketcham's shirt (which I'll bet he never got back), was marked with blood spots, but they were "pronounced without hesitation of menstrual origin."
No blood on table cutlery, the marks on the little lulu book weren't blood either; no blood anywhere but in the murder room, the hall outside it, and the staircase down, and the smear on the downstairs door. If Emma Cunningham and John Eckel, and possibly George Snodgrass and maybe even Augusta, had murdered or helped in the murder of Harvey Burdell —as most of New York believed, and as Coroner Connery seemed certain —not a shred of hard evidence had yet been found to help prove it.
Connery kept hunting. While the doctors were making their tests, he had Cyrenius Stevens on the stand. Stevens had been taken to the station house to stare in at John Eckel in his cell, and now Connery tried to get him to say that he recognized Eckel as Van Dolan. But Stevens wouldn't quite do that; Eckel might be "Van Dolan," but he would not say for sure.
At one point while Stevens talked about a visit to Dr. Burdell, at which Burdell explained the innocent nature of Sophronia Stevens's visits, Connery cried, "Stop, Sir, was Mrs. Cunningham present?"
"She was not."
Up to his old tricks, Connery said, "Probably she was peeking through a crack, and having a view of the elephant. [Laughter]." To "see the elephant" was nineteenth-century slang for seeing the world, widening one's experience: a joke well up to Coroner Connery's usual standard.
A Mr. John T. Hildreth of Brooklyn, who was next, contributed absolutely nothing to Connery's search for the murderer, but I'm grateful anyway. He was "an impulsive gentleman," said one reporter correctly, "past middle age, wearing spectacles, and anxious to speak his mind…."
"What do you know of Dr. Burdell's death?"
"Nothing but what I have read in the papers."
"Very important testimony!"
"I may have known Mrs. Cunningham in Brooklyn, if her name was Emma A. Hempstead … I knew her before she was married, and after, too—that is, if she ever was married, but I don't believe she was; she had the reputation of being a prostitute."
"Have you any reason for saying so?"
"I have a great many reasons for saying so. I know there was a difficulty with a certain gentleman in Brooklyn, who was likely to get into a scrape—"
"To whom was she married?"
"To Cunningham, the distiller."
"You see," said Connery, "I am a queer fellow: I can get something out of nothing after all. Her husband was a distiller?"
"Yes, a distiller; a manufacturer, as I call it, of liquid death."
"A man-u fact-tu rer of li-quid death?" Connery replied, getting his laugh, "I will put that down for the benefit of the Temperance Society."
"Put it down, it may do some good."
"How long was she married before his death took place?"
"I don't know."
"Did you hear that he died very suddenly?"
"I did, and I wish they would disinter his body, and examine it, for I believe he was murdered by his wife. I do think so, and have always thought so. She was a bad woman, and had no better example from her mother. Her father was as good a man as ever lived."
"How did you know she was so bad?"
"A lawyer in New York addressed a letter to a certain gentleman in Brooklyn," Hildreth explained confusedly, "threatening him unless he did something to retrieve her character. I went to that lawyer and told him he had got his head in the lion's mouth."
"Well, this amounts to nothing," the coroner finally decided.
But Hildreth, "getting more excited," said the Times, now said, "I have no doubt but that her marriage with Dr. Burdell is a fabrication."
A juror spoke up. "What evidence have you that Mrs. Cunningham was a prostitute?"
"I have many evidences; I have had bills of hers handed me in for collection—"
Connery cut him off: "Have you any proof she was a strumpet?"
"I believe her to have been as much so as ever Phoebe Doty was." (Sorry I can't help with the identification of Phoebe Doty, as fine a name for a strumpet as Thrasher Lyons for a roué.) "I have no regret," Hildreth added of Emma Cunningham's alleged strumpetry, "that I do not know it personally."
"Did you ever give her the wink yourself?" asked the unquenchable Connery.
"I can't say I ever did…. A gentleman told me," Hildreth went on, piling hearsay upon hearsay, "that he overheard a conversation between Mrs. Cunningham and a man in which they were to meet in the evening on the corner of Nassau and Washington Streets, Brooklyn, at a certain time, and he was to take out his handkerchief as a signal."
"Who was the man?" a juror asked.
"It was not me."
"Gentlemen," said Connery to the jury, "this is not evidence; I must stop this here." He indicated a written summary of Hildreth's testimony: "Will you step up here, and sign this?"
"Is it my death warrant?"
"Yes, sir, your death warrant."
"And so," the Times said, "the witness was fitly put from the stand."
Sophronia Stevens described the same events her husband had. She, too, had been shown Eckel, sitting in his cell, and now Connery asked her if "by virtue of the solemn oath, Madam, which you have taken," she could identify him as "Van Dolan."
This time he got results: "Yes, sir, very much so," said Sophronia Stevens, and Connery adjourned for lunch.
After lunch, more hearsay on hearsay: a Seventeenth Ward cop said "a certain party down in Stanton Street" had seen Eckel hand Mrs. Cunningham a roll of bills as she sat there in a carriage the morning the murder was discovered. And then an actual witness: he lived on Stanton Street near Eckel's hides-and-fat business, and had actually seen Eckel hand over the money to the woman in the carriage. They whisked him right upstairs for a look at Emma Cunningham, brought him back, and now he told the jury that Mrs. Cunningham was not that woman.
"Was that lady tall or short?" said a juror.
"Short."
"Gaily dressed?"
"Rather."
"Was she alone or did she have a little boy?"
"She had a little boy."
"I know her very well," the juror said—surprisingly, in view of what followed. "It's not Mrs. Cunningham."
"The juror whispered it about," said the Tribune, "that this woman used to go by the name of Prosser; he always had an impression that Eckel kept her. She was a short woman with very black eyes and a white face —a pretty woman." It eventually turned out—showing what a compact town New York must have been—that the juror was quite right.
Another witness, and then, walking toward the stand, ca
me my favorite among all the many inquest witnesses: the Honorable Daniel Ullman. Apparently his manner could have been appropriately accompanied by drum roll and trumpet, for both Times and Tribune reported it tongue in cheek. The Trib man actually wrote his account with irreverent stage directions:
"(Enter Daniel Ullman) Your name, if you please.
"(Deliberately and emphatically) Daniel Ullman."
And in his reply when asked where he lived the Tribune reporter inserted a comment in Latin: "… since Saturday morning I have taken up my old quarters (con dignitate) at the St. Nicholas Hotel again."
"You were familiarly acquainted with the family, Sir; Mr. Burdell, Mrs. Cunningham, Mr. Eckel, and others?"
But this was no man for a simple Yes or No, sir. "Will the Coroner permit me to make a statement which I suppose will cover most of the points which his interrogatories will reach?"
"Yes, Sir, certainly."
"After I have done that, I shall be ready to answer any questions he pleases."
"All right, Sir."
"I will endeavor to state concisely all my connections with this house."
"Go on, Sir."
"Some time in the month of October last, my friend Mr. Anson Wolcott of Lockport, who intended to reside permanently in this city—"
Connery tried to stem the tide: "I beg, if you please, that all extraneous matters …" He paused, then added, a little desperately maybe, "We want exactly the transactions in the house, if you please."
Too late. "That is exactly what I wish to give the Coroner; and by this course I suppose I will reach it better."
"Yes, Sir, but this seems rather remote."
"I wish to show how I came here, and what I saw, so far as I am concerned with this matter."