The Eight Day Week

The New York Observer is somewhat affectionately called"the Pink Rag" in my household, though not everyone has felt the same way about this celebrity-cult shmate. Years ago, I soundly criticized their columnist, Nicholas von Hoffman, for his misreading of American history and literature when he wrote about the "gentleman's society" of mid-19th century America.

Rags turn to riches though, and frogs to princes. In my eyes, the Observer has redeemed itself, permanently. Sara Vilkomerson (assisted by the able Meredith Bryan) writes the tarty Eight-Day Week column for this paper, recently converted by its new owner to tabloid format. I was asked by one of the able public relations agents handling my affairs to call Ms. Bryan about my lecture that occurred on July 22nd at Green-Wood Cemetery. As you will read below, I indeed stopped by the editorial offices of this journal, to drop off a complimentary copy of my book as well as copies of the foregoing explanatory material.

Meredith stepped out from her cubicle and greeted me pleasantly, a tall, straight blonde-haired young woman, stylishly dressed on her undoubtedly modest emolument from her employer. A hard look in her eye for such a young person, despite a pleasant smile and an appropriate disposition towards me. Probably only months out of Skidmore or some such, Meredith is now accustomed to dealing with hard people, and PR floggers are the titanium of their class.

I don't think Meredith knew what to make of me, with my long hair and shorts and bicycle helmet and seat dangling from my backpack. The intellectual component of von Hoffman's article and my response may not have struck much of a chord on her keyboard. Not to worrry: it's the process I enjoy. But here's to Meredith: she and her co-columnist carved me up with the expertise of a sushi-counterman. Now I can die happy: I've been roasted to a crisp in The Eight-Day Week.

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 looks worse, but in fact is far more luxurious than Emma’s: I am in heaven when I sit in the secure area in the climate-controlled basement in the Cemetery’s executive offices that holds a trove of documents, images, and objects that relate in one way or another to the permanent residents in whose memory I do service each Wednesday. As a volunteer archivist I have the best of both worlds. I enjoy unrestricted access to a magnificent collection of historical detritus that the resident historian, Jeffrey Richman, has acquired for the Green-Wood Historic Fund over the past 17 years. Plus the freedom to stop and examine thoroughly any items that interest me as I sort and catalog the store-house contents.

Jack Horner must have felt just so, sitting in his corner, eating his Christmas pie. Over and over I stick in my thumb and pull out a plum, ripe fruit like the lantern slide about which I blogged in my New York Wanderer blog @

http://new-york-wanderer.blogspot.com/2006/11/miners-lantern.html

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Emma Cunningham and Harvey Burdell are represented in good measure in the archives, but until a few weeks ago I had not come upon an item relating to either of them with which I was not already familiar. There I sat on a Wednesday in June, though, working on a catalog of the books that fill a gaggle of ramshackle cardboard boxes. Mind you, I paid attention in high-school science class. Lightning cannot strike inside a building, or so I thought. Maybe the steel cage drew it in, who knows? But the bolt that struck knocked me off my seat. I opened a slender, leather-bound book published in New York in 1859 and read with astonishment:

City and County of New York – State of New York; ss. – Alfred C. Hills, of the city and county of New York, being duly sworn, deposeth and saith, that he is the city editor of THE NEW YORK EVENING POST, and is the author of a book entitled “Matrimonial Brokerage in the Metropolis, published by Thacher & Hutchinson, of 523 Broadway, including Chapter XXXIII, which chapter is entitled “A New and Singular Chapter in the History of Mrs. Cunningham-Burdell, and that said chapter was published in the Daily, Semi-Weekly, and Weekly Evening Post, and copied by various newspapers of this country and of Canada.

The volume collected a series of articles written by the audacious city editor, investigating the practices of an industry that some called a thinly veiled form of prostitution. Emma Cunningham was not a quitter, and when her final ploy to get her hands on Harvey Burdell’s modest fortune failed, and the bogus baby scandal left her penniless, it was try, try again.

Emma Augusta Hempstead hadn’t much luck when it came to husbands. Her first, George D. Cunningham, was the scion of his family. His Presbyterian father, William Cunningham, Sr. operated a successful distillery on Front Street down where hipsters now wander among the loft buildings and art galleries of Dumbo. George took over the family business long before his father passed away and left the operation in trust for George and his siblings.

Better at attracting a wife twenty years his junior than he was at accounting and inventory, after a brief period of giving Emma the upper middle class life style to which she aspired, George started to fail. A spiral of financial setbacks left him with the same last chance as tens of thousands of East Coast Americans. Off George hied to California in 1850 to seek his fortune in gold. His adventure was short-lived, though and within the year he returned to New York via the isthmus, perhaps ill with a tropical disease. Emma and George moved to lower Tenth Avenue in Manhattan and a series of modest residences in Brooklyn, ending up in a small house near the mouth of the new Gowanus Canal on 4th Place. There George expired on June 1, 1854, leaving Emma with a $10,000 insurance policy and a lot of debts.




With five children and estranged from her own family by dint of having married a God-less Presbyterian distiller’s son, Emma needed a wealthy, new husband and needed one fast. Desperation overtook discretion, and she picked Harvey Burdell.

In the mid-1850s, Reverend Uriah Marvine pastured his flock at the Greenwich Reformed Dutch Church (located on the south side of Amos Street (now Tenth Street) from 1826-1863 before moving to its final location in the vicinity of 43rd Street and Sixth Avenue). His parsonage at 732 Greenwich Street was not infrequently the site of small weddings, where his officiant’s fee supplemented his undoubtedly modest shepherd’s emolument.

At the Coroner’s inquest into Harvey Burdell’s death, Emma Cunningham astounded those present when from the folds of her mourning dress she produced a certificate of her marriage to Dr. Burdell, duly executed by Reverend Marvine. Why would she have murdered the man to who had agreed to provide for her and her children, whom she had agreed to love, honor and obey?





Her narrow escape from the Tombs courtyard gallows and the bogus baby debacle left Emma impoverished and still desperate for a means of support for herself and her children. Marriage to a suitable man remained a necessity, but her notoriety across America made the services of a competent marriage broker indispensable.

Under the alias C. Frank Fitzgerald, editor Hills presented himself as a bachelor visiting from St. Louis when he arrived at Mrs. Jesse Willis’ matrimonial parlor at 18 West 43rd Street in November of 1858. The establishment’s classified advertisements in the New York Herald attracted a customer base from far and wide.

From the January 27, 1859 issue of the Herald (quoted in this book) one gets a sense of the tenor that Mrs. Willis tried to maintain:

“Mrs. Jesse Willis will give introduction to ladies and gentlemen with a view to matrimony, at her office, 18 West Forty-third Street from 3 to 8 P.M.. Parties suited; references required. Gentlemen’s fees $1, ladies free. Letters from the country must be post-paid with return letter stamps. N.B. – all business confidential.”

“Fitzgerald” showed up for his first appointment with Mrs. Willis on time. It was understood that he was a wealthy young man, and the proprietress had promised to introduce him to a young widow “who was represented as possessing every desirable accomplishment.” After waiting for half an hour, the suitor grew impatient, and Mrs. Willis offered to introduce him to another widow who happened to be sitting in the next room.

Editor Hills had attended many days of Emma Cunningham’s trial for the murder of Dr. Harvey Burdell. Imagine his astonishment when Mrs. Willis led Emma in to meet him.

“Mrs. Cunningham gave Fitzgerald a piercing look, as if to satisfy herself whether she had ever seen him before. His self-possession, however, if shaken an instant upon the first recognition, had fully returned, and he bore her scrutinizing glances without any exhibition of anxiety.”

Emma quickly made clear her opinion of the office,

“ ‘Matrimonial offices,’ said she, ‘ are very common in Paris; people think nothing of it there. But some of our Americans have an idea that they are immoral. But that depends altogether upon how people make use of them.”

The two danced delicately back and forth over matters of propriety, while Emma lied about the length of her widowhood as well as her age. After a long interview, it had grown dark outside, and “Fitzgerald” thought it only proper to escort Emma outdoors. The two walked east to Fifth Avenue and then turned southward. As the couple passed the many palatial residences that still abounded on the Avenue south of the Croton Reservoir, Emma continued to lie through her teeth, remarking of her acquaintance with the owners. The masquerading newspaperman grew nervous as they approached Madison Square. He feared they might encounter an acquaintance who would blow his cover, so Hills bid Mrs. Cunningham adieu on the excuse of hurrying off to Brooklyn for an important engagement.

The pair arranged a second meeting for a week later at Mrs. Willis’, and when Hills showed up, he complained of not feeling well. Ever one to recognize an opportunity when it stared her in the mouth, Emma urged her new beau to take some sustenance at a restaurant where they could share a private room. Hills was no sucker though, and begging off once again, he handed Emma a five dollar note from his bankroll. She grasped it without hesitation, but before Hills left, Emma made one more unsuccessful attempt to convince him to go to a private place and let her “nurse” him back to health. Another appointment was set for the following Monday,

The third interview started in Mrs. Willis’ parlor, but soon the owner told the pair that she need the room for another client, and they were sent upstairs to a private room, complete with fireplace and bed. There Emma and “C. Frank” circled each other verbally, the fake St. Louisian finally offering to take Emma down south with him. Emma countered by urging her caller to buy and furnish an uptown New York house for her while she ministered to his every need.

Saying he’d think it over, Fitzgerald rose form his chair and started for the door, but Emma barred his way: “ ‘No, sir, you shall not go; you shall stay here with me;’ and so saying she seized him by the arm and hurled him back into the chair. Fitzgerald was astonished at her great muscular strength.” “ ‘There is power enough,’ thought he, “to overcome half the dentists in Bond street united.’ She handled him, in spite of his resistance, as a strong man would handle a child.”

After whirling her visitor around two or three times when he tried again to leave, Emma made a deal, accepting another banknote and a promise to meet again before allowing her quarry out of the room. Hills ran out to the hall and tried the door, but it was locked. Fumbling in the dark, he made his way to the basement stairs, and then back up to the now empty parlor. Thinking that Emma had meant to rob him, the fellow was relieved when Mrs. Willis entered the parlor and allowed him to depart unharmed.

By pre-arranged plan, during the entire length of his visit, the reporter had a friend stand watch outside of Mrs. Willis’ house. After Hills departed, his friend spied on Emma as she left the house and hailed an omnibus going downtown. The spy boarded the same car and observed Emma stepping out at White Street where she entered a lodging house in which rooms were let without board. It was quite a distance from the homes of her supposed Fifth Avenue friends. Emma was apparently conserving her pennies as she continued her quest.

Emma Cunningham and one or more of her children were spotted in several American towns through the late 1850s and 1860s. By 1870, though, she made it out to California where the San Francisco Morning Call of April 10, 1870 reported her last marriage.




Silver miner William Williams became her spouse, and they remained married until Emma was again widowed in 1883. Not long thereafter she made her way back to New York City, penniless again, and died four years later. A son or two may have accompanied her out west; Green-Wood burial files indicate that a close Cunningham relative wrote from Baja California in the early 1890s concerning Emma’s re-interment in the Cunningham family plot after first having been laid to rest in her niece Phoebe Morrell’s lot. There she lies today, in the peace and quiet that eluded poor Emma through most of her adult years. Certainly, though, not for lack of trying…

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 penchant for domestic life. Many an evening he would invite Emma into his bedroom, where he kept a cage of songbirds among his other furnishings. Think Gangs of New York and the scene where a visit is paid to an office, perhaps a politico's in Tammany Hall, with a gilded cage adorning the premises.

Though Eckel lived downtown, his business was divided between a tanning establishment on Stanton Street and a bone-boiling and tallow-rendering yard in the abattoir district on the East Side above 42nd Street. Few traces remain in that area of its noxious history, even though for fully a century before the early 1950s construction of the United Nations headquarters, the bleat of cattle at the East River docks and the smells of packing houses filled the blocks along First Avenue, from 42nd to 49th Streets.

My blog about New York City history The New York Wanderer, contains a two-part article about the district entitled “Dressed to Kill,” @

http://new-york-wanderer.blogspot.com/2006/10/dressed-to-kill-part-1.html

http://new-york-wanderer.blogspot.com/2006/10/dressed-to-kill-part-2.html


The articles recount the history of the neighborhood in which Eckel operated his factory at the corner of 45th Street and First Avenue. Take a look at the William Perris map of the area from the mid-19th century included in Part 2 of these articles: John Eckel’s establishment is noted by name on the map. Although the other photos and stereo cards in my work date from much later years, you can still get a wonderful sense of the industrial flavor of an area that today bears no resemblance to its not-so-distant past.

After Emma was acquitted, Eckel was freed on a write of nole prosequi, but he, too, hardly kept his head low. Prosecuted by the Republican-controlled Metropolitan Sanitary Commission during the 1860s for alleged malfeasance in the operation of his uptown operations, Eckel turned to his Bond Street neighbor Alvah Blaisdell for a different business opportunity. Blaisdell and Eckel had both been “friends” of Harvey Burdell, and Eckel was admitted into Blaisdell’s wholesale liquor business after the Civil War. The scandals of the Grant presidency filtered down to their level, though, and the pair were prosecuted for bribery and alleged evasion of the federal liquor stamp tax. Eckel died in the Albany Penitentiary in 1869.

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 to roam. My years of research turned up nary a single physical remnant of these people’s lives to enjoy first hand. The dignified tomb of “Elegant” Oakey Hall, the modest gravestone of Dimis Hubbard, and the earthly remains of Emma’s father, Christopher Hempstead, Sr. all astonished me when I finally found them.

Poor Dimis: “sheltered” by her cousin Harvey after the young wife caught her husband William Vorce philandering in a whorehouse in lower Manhattan. After Harvey finished his incestuous commerce with Vorce's twenty-something bride of but a few years, Dimis returned to Jefferson County, disgraced and alone. Thank heavens she was not called as a witness when her cousin was found stabbed to death. Neither Coroner Connery nor counsel for either side in the Emma’s murder trial saw the need to put the young woman on the stand, despite her central role in the mayhem that ensued at 31 Bond Street after Emma Cunningham moved in, first as a boarder of Mrs. Jones in the fall of 1855, then becoming landlady in May of 1856. Dimis ended up marrying another Jefferson County man, Hubert Barton, but she predeceased him in 1888, at the age of 55 in Watertown, NY. Barton passed on in 1902, and the two are buried side by side in Brookside Cemetery in Watertown. Dimis had no children by either husband.

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Sometimes you needn’t look too hard when digging up remains of the day. Such was the case when I arrived at Trinity Church’s uptown cemetery in Washington Heights, Manhattan, prepared to do some walking about in order to find Oakey Hall’s grave. Broadway bifurcates the majestic northern burial ground, and ornate tombstones and mausolea decorate lushly wooded slopes. Even by the time of Harvey Burdell’s death, Trinity’s downtown churchyard was long-filled, and the Episcopal Archdiocese opened a magnificent burial ground on a pastoral site far from the center of urban life.

Oakey Hall certainly needed a quiet resting place. The bogus baby scandal brought the sweet taste of revenge to his lips, but Hall would ultimately be vanquished by Henry Lauren Clinton a second time. Though a Republican Party stalwart at the time of the Burdell goings-on, Hall soon switched horses and became a Tammany Hall regular. His allegiance to Boss Tweed was duly and fully repaid. Infamous as the ruler of New York after the Civil War, in his heyday, Tweed held no elective office at the height of his power, choosing, instead, to rule through three henchmen. At the end of the Tweed Ring, Controller Richard B. Connolly, City Chamberlain Peter B. Sweeny, and Mayor Abraham Oakey Hall controlled every aspect of City government. When the corruption scandal broke in 1870 and a committee of seventy citizens was appointed to investigate, who was named Special Prosecutor to go after Tweed and his troika? Oakey Hall stared out of the prisoners’ dock at a very familiar face, that of Henry Lauren Clinton. Three trials later, Hall remained a free man, his role in the grafting never proved beyond a reasonable doubt. He died on October 7, 1898, impoverished, and was buried in his first wife’s family mausoleum, according to his biographer, Croswell Brown.

Trinity’s uptown cemetery has two main entrances, one on Amsterdam Avenue south of 157th Street, and the second on 155th Street, west of Broadway. I didn’t even need to inquire at the office when I made my way uptown to find Oakey Hall’s gravesite. Poverty is hardly the first thing that jumped to mind when I encountered Hall’s mausoleum immediately inside the latter of these two gates. Heaven knows who paid for the majestic tomb (which is, given his own surname thereon, perhaps not the site of Hall's original interment), but he lies there in peace, having suffered over 25 years of disgrace after Tweed’s downfall.




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Emma Hempstead’s parents were devout Wesleyan Methodists, members of the Sands Street congregation and others as they moved around Brooklyn in the 1820s and 30s. Rope-maker Christopher Hempstead, Sr. made his final home at 94 Classon Avenue, a site now memorialized by the construction of a ramp to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway smack on top of what once was a beautiful tree-shaded residential block of clapboard-sided and brick houses. In the late 1830s, the Wallabout neighborhood was a difficult carriage ride from the Sands Street church and its satellite chapels near the Navy Yard in which the Hempstead family had long prayed. Christopher Sr. spent the final days of his life practicing his religion in a small local congregation.

In 1828, the Wesleyan Methodists acquired a one-third interest in the multi-denominational Brooklyn civic burial ground established four years earlier. The site at Auburn Place and Portland Avenue is now covered with the early 20th century structures of Cumberland Hospital. Real estate development galloped through downtown Brooklyn in the mid- and late nineteenth century. Residential neighborhoods rapidly depopulated as property values rose and commercial structures replaced once-quiet blocks of homes. Depopulation also meant dwindling church memberships. Many congregations moved lock, stock and barrel to the neighborhoods where significant bunches of their parishioners resettled. Notices frequently appeared in the Brooklyn Eagle and other papers advertising for loved ones to come and claim the remains of their family members from churchyard cemeteries, barring which the coffins would be unearthed and disposed of en masse. It was not uncommon to see carts filled with deteriorated wooden caskets, bones sticking out of the cracks, rumbling down Brooklyn streets, on their way to mass graves.

Such indeed was the fate of Emma Hempstead Cunningham’s father’s remains. When the Brooklyn burial ground was excavated in the late 19th century, the unclaimed stones and remains from the Wesleyan Methodist section were transported to The Evergreens Cemetery in southwestern Brooklyn and deposited at the crest of one of its major escarpments. I bicycled out to Bushwick one summer afternoon and inquired about Christopher Hempstead Sr.’s grave. The Evergreens attracts far fewer history buffs than Green-Wood, and Superintendent Salamone was thrilled to have me visit, even on the spur of the moment. It was a gorgeous day when he escorted me to the hill-top in question. Few know of the excavation of the Brooklyn City burial ground, much less its relationship to The Evergreens. We quickly found the exact spot, but alas the only sign of the graves was one illegible tombstone fragment, peeking up from some very green grass. I solaced myself with the superintendent’s certainty about where we stood, and the 50-mile view out over the Rockaway Beach and the Atlantic Ocean. Christopher’s eldest daughter may well still turn in her grave, but her father's eternal rest is assured.

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Skeffington Sanjay practiced law in New York in the mid-19th century. One of his clients was a dapper Bond Street resident named Harvey Burdell. Sanjay (whose name is frequently spelled Sanxay in contemporary documents), handled a number of not-so-civil matters for Burdell, including some of his dealings with his nemesis, Emma Cunningham. Though I’ve not tested my theory exhaustively, empirical evidence makes me a betting man: chances are 50/50 that if you were not Catholic or Jewish, had a few bucks in the mid-19th century, and were a resident of Manhattan or Brooklyn, then when you passed on, you were buried at Green-Wood Cemetery.

A few weeks ago I was walking out of the Green-Wood grounds the long way after my day of archival work. It was warm and sunny, and I headed for the Fourth Avenue entrance down at the southwest tail end of the giant site. As I turned towards the mulberry trees beckoning to me from the maintenance shed sidewalks with their loads of ripe fruit, an obelisk caught my eye. Sure enough, there was Sanjay. They’re gathered here, these Burdell players, almost all of them. Heaven knows what happens after the clock strikes twelve.

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 enjoying the spotlight and control that he relished in every part of his life.

Though the scene below shows a faro table ten years after Burdell’s grisly demise, the picture changed very little in that decade. Thomas Francis Beard’s engraving published in the February 23, 1867 issue of Harper’s Weekly shows the crowd gathered around the dealer in the front center, at the moment of the “turn,” when the outcome of the betting is determined. At the right-hand end of the table sits the case-keeper, who keeps track of the cards dealt for the players who try to calculate their chances as the game proceeds.

The elegant dress of many of the players depicts a typical evening for Dr. Burdell, unwinding after a long day in his dental operatory ministering to the needs of a mixed clientele.

This recreation may well have caused the end of Burdell’s life, though. Skillful at his game, Dr. Burdell allegedly won $6000 one evening late in January of 1857, and the unhappy loser may well have taken vengeance on the unlucky dentist, perhaps acting in Emma Cunningham’s employ.