Forgotten News

by Jack Finney

  Did Harvey Burdell really marry Emma Cunningham? That was the first question in Connery's mind, and he immediately subpoenaed this man to find out about that. He is the Reverend Mr. Marvine, and he took the stand now, at two-thirty Sunday afternoon. Marvine turned out to be as Dicken-sian as his first name: a Uriah Bumble, a Mr. Addlepate. Whom had he married on October 28?

  "A person came to me," Dr. Marvine replied carefully, "calling himself Burdell." Helpfully he added, "I married him to a lady." Would he recognize the man? "I might…."

  They took him into the bedroom, and Marvine stood beside the mahogany bedstead looking down at the pale, drained face, its eyes closed; stood for some time, but could not recognize in it the living face of the man he had married. "The Coroner then had Mrs. Cunningham brought into the room, and again asked the minister the question as to the marriage. He scanned her features, but said he could not positively recognize her or the deceased." During the conversation between the frustrated coroner and the minister, "Mrs. Cunningham gazed at the deceased, and became much affected—her tears flowing copiously. Stooping, she took the cold hand of the deceased and kissed it, when she was led from the room by the officer."

  Captain Dilk had converted a back room on the second floor into a holding cell for witnesses, and now they brought in a young med student who'd known Burdell, and had been in and out of the house.

  He didn't have much to tell them except that he'd never heard Mrs. Cunningham referred to as Mrs. Burdell. But now the coroner left the narrow path of his official function, expanding the inquiry into matters, and in a way, that soon got him into trouble.

  "Did you know that improper conduct was going on in this house?"

  "I had very strong suspicions…."

  "Did you not know that there was a certain intimacy, a matter of congress [the paper set that in italics] between Mr. Eckel and Mrs. Cunningham?"

  But the young man "did not suspect it."

  A bit later: "By the virtue of your solemn oath, do you think this is a regular, moral virtuous house?"

  "I had suspicion that something wrong was going on between Mrs. Cunningham and Dr. Burdell."

  This kind of dirty talk worried one of the jurors, who spoke up to ask whether evidence like this "of a very delicate nature" ought to be published in the newspapers.

  More witnesses, including ex-landlady Margaret Jones. "A portion of the evidence of this witness relative to the miscarriage of Mrs. Cunningham," the Times told its readers, "was unfit for publication."

  It was Sunday night, the coroner had got nowhere, so he adjourned till ten in the morning, and now the undertakers went to work. In the matter of dress they seem to have followed Mrs. Cunningham's request of the night before. For: "The corpse of the deceased, attired in a new suit of black, was placed in a handsome rosewood coffin, with silver mountings, and lined with white satin. A black cravat and high short collar concealed the wounds in the throat. The cuts in the face were very visible. On a silver plate on the coffin lid" was engraved an inscription. When the undertakers had finished, artist Brightly of Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper was allowed in to sketch the result of their work.

  This is what he saw as he stood in the doorway between Dr. Burdell's office and bedroom, sketch pad and pencil in hand. Then he walked on in, stopped at the foot of the coffin, and drew this.

  5

  These are the beginnings, in the sensible nineteenth-century style of stacked headings that summarized at a glance these two great dailies' coverage of a story that would run for months. But Times and Trib were two days late: already in type Saturday when this biggest story of years broke, and with no Sunday editions. It must have been frustrating to their editors, hearing newsboys peddling rival papers that weekend, but they made up for it; their reporters seem hardly to have slept during those two days, talking to everyone they could discover who had anything to add or thought he did.

  On Monday they were ready, their stories beginning with the headings you've seen, and to continue thereafter in a remarkable daily coverage, the Times occasionally printing full-newspaper-size supplements containing nothing but pages of spillover. I certainly haven't counted, but Times and Tribune must have printed millions of words on the Burdell case; or so I believe, having read them all in the countless columns it finally took to tell the story whose eventual ramifications those editors didn't yet even imagine. Big columns, too, wider than today's, and on larger pages. The only thing smaller was the type.

  On this same day, before resuming the inquest, Coroner Connery invited everyone—jurors and reporters, too—to join him in again searching the house, and I'm glad he did. Because although the Times of Tuesday treated the result a little contemptuously, both the Tribune man and I thought what they found was pretty interesting.

  "In the room of Mr. Snodgrass," said the Trib man, "his clothes were hanging upon the wall, and a couple of bronze statuettes stood on the drawers. There was no washbowl. The bed was in a very topsy-turvy state —bolsters and pillows being mixed with feminine underclothes in the greatest confusion. The drawers—all but one—were filled with all sorts of knick-knacks, articles of feminine wearing apparel. A dozen or so replies to the party given [by Mrs. Cunningham on Augusta's birthday in January] on the 14th were mixed up with the rest. On a piece of paper were these lines traced in a delicate hand [Helen's, I suspect, and I'm grateful the Tribune man took the trouble to copy them]: " 'What would the rose, with all her pride, be worth, Were there no Sun to call her brightness forth? Maidens unloved, like flowers in darkness thrown, Want but that light, which comes from Love alone.' " Downstairs on the piano in the front parlor the search party found "a little lulu book [Don't ask] entitled The Boat Builder, published in 1852 … 'Miss Georgiana A. Cunningham, 10 years old and 3,900 days,' was written on the fly leaf in a child's hand. The leaf containing the 79th and 80th pages was cut out; blood was visible on the edge of the leaf not cut off. The two leaves containing the 91st to 94th pages were torn out; the 95th was smeared with blood. These three leaves were the only leaves missing." As the Times man said, "Scarcely anything of importance … can be attached to this discovery," but the Tribune man knew what we wanted, and found some more: "A few blotches on the walls of the rooms, and along the halls, some of them as high as one can easily reach, evidently produced by killing mosquitoes or other insects, attracted considerable attention."

  Some cops arrived from the station house with Eckel and Snodgrass, Connery had them taken up to a second-floor room, and the two men were made to strip in the presence of Dr. George Woodward, the assistant coroner, and another witness. This was to see if they had any marks or bruises consistent with having been "engaged in the fearful tragedy of Friday night." They hadn't.

  In his zeal the coroner then did something really dumb: he had Emma Cunningham examined. According to the Tribune she was forced to strip, too, by the same witnesses. "Why Mrs. Cunningham was compelled to submit to so degrading an examination at hands of men when there were a dozen ladies in the house competent to perform this duty, we cannot conceive. No marks of any kind were found…."

  Cousin Demis Hubbard arrived, "and the scene of her visit… to the coffin of the murdered man was enough to wring tears from a heart hard enough to take the life of such a man as her gashed and scarred relative lying before her."

  A busy morning, and now—it was cold today, the murder room chilly—Connery moved the inquest here to the first-floor back parlor, andwe get a little further view of the interior of 31 Bond. They moved in tables and chairs for reporters, in the foreground and at left; chairs for jurors by the windows; and next day carried down the Doctor's dentist chair. In the later view, on the previous page, you can see it.

  Today it was George Snodgrass to the stand first, and he sat for a long time answering the coroner's questions about how he'd come to live here, how well he knew the Cunninghams, what he could say about relations between Emma Cunningham and the Doctor, and between her and Eckel, and what everyone had done the ni
ght of the murder and the morning after.

  He said nothing harmful to Emma Cunningham, Eckel, or himself; as for the bloody shirt marked "Ketcham" found in the attic, that was "mine, Sir," Snodgrass told them. He'd borrowed it when staying with a friend on Twenty-third Street, whose name and address he provided. Here at home he'd tossed it into a storeroom for washing, as he did with all his soiled linen. The small marks of blood it showed must have been picked up from clothes already there.

  Once in answer to a question about who had told him something or other, Snodgrass answered, "Miss Helen Cunningham," and a reporter said, "The tone and manner of the witness in pronouncing this name— a tone which told the tenderness he could not hide—immediately enlisted sympathy in his behalf." He was later asked, "Did you think … that if you could marry one of [the Cunningham girls], you would do it?" And "Mr. Snodgrass's face grew very red."

  Smith Ely, Jr., "in the hide and leather business," confirmed that he'd left a note for Eckel on Friday evening arranging a business meeting Saturday morning; which did seem to explain Eckel's leaving early, even if somewhat earlier than necessary.

  If Connery was trying to pin the murder on Eckel and Emma Cunningham—and he was, as he would thoroughly demonstrate—he wasn't getting anywhere today. But a juryman had an idea. "A juror then stated that it had been demonstrated in France that the object last seen by the deceased would be found impressed on the retina of the eye, and that it would be well to have an oculist or some other competent person make that examination in this case.

  "The Coroner had no objection at all.

  "The District-Attorney said that … he had got a friend to make certain observations to test the theory, but the result did not increase his faith in the theory. All these experiments, however, were worth trying."

  Everybody up to the murder room then, reporters included, and they searched Dr. Burdell's desk and safe, finding nothing useful.

  Up to Eckel's room, where they unlocked his "secretoire" and "found in a large envelope various papers endorsed in Burdell's hand 'private papers.' " Among these: Harvey Burdell's affidavit that he had never made a will up to October 8, 1856, "and that if he had made such a will it was a forgery," as the Trib put it; in Burdell's handwriting a release from Mrs. Cunningham of all claims she might have against him, but unsigned. And Emma Cunningham's lease on the house; her note to Burdell, signed last September, "for $109 for ninety days"; and the famous paper in which Dr. Burdell promised Emma Cunningham his friendship for life.

  One thing they didn't find—hadn't found in the dead man's pockets, and didn't find now in his room, his office, his safe, or anywhere else— was the lease which in May would have transferred this house from Emma Cunningham to Mrs. Stansbury, and which he'd said would be ready for signing on the morning he was found murdered.

  Mary Donaho was called to the stand, and in his excitement over what she now told them, Connery began making remarks that added up to the worst mistake of his career. As Mary sat there in the back parlor, which she'd probably dusted more than once, talking about quarrels she'd heard in this house … of the night Dr. Burdell had rushed out to bring back the police … of the hullabaloo the night he was locked out … of her suspicions about the conduct of Eckel and Mrs. Cunningham, Coroner Connery couldn't prevent his pleasure and bias from showing.

  Examples: When Mary described how she and Hannah had been sent early and mysteriously to bed, Connery cried, "Aha!" When she referred to Eckel's canaries, Connery said, "Yes, he was a bird himself!" getting a laugh. Mary said she'd never seen Emma Cunningham in the Doctor's room at an "improper hour," but Connery interjected, "I don't know about that; propriety don't depend on an hour…."

  And then the coroner popped out the remark that would dog him for months. Had Mrs. Cunningham ever threatened the Doctor? Yes, said Mary, "… she said it was time he was out of the world, for he was not fit to live in it …" and in his elation Connery cried, "I knew, Mary, I knew that you carried your tail behind you, by gracious!" Undoubtedly poor Edward Connery knew what he meant by that and that he meant it harmlessly, but no one else seemed to understand it, and it didn't sound like a proper remark. Once he got started, the excited coroner didn't stop. When Mary apparently spoke too fast or confusedly, Connery said, "Tell it easy, Mary," nodding at the reporters busy taking it down, "they want to get it. Those men are not going to annoy you. Some of them are old stale bachelors, and their hearing is bad. If you asked one of them to kiss you, he wouldn't hear it. (Laughter) Go on, now, and tell it out." When Mary quoted Eckel's breakfast-table remark that he'd like to string up Dr. Burdell, Connery cried, "Aha! Good for him!"

  Mary said Helen Cunningham had told her of looking through a keyhole and seeing Eckel leave her mother's room "not dressed as he should have been."

  "Dressed in a state of Nature, like Timon of Athens?" said the now irrepressible coroner, getting a laugh, and it took a juror to straighten out what Mary meant: "With his nightgown on, you mean?" and Mary said yes.

  This kind of goofy remark, which he continued for days after, made Connery suddenly famous or at least talked about throughout the city. Artist Brightly got a Mathew Brady ambrotype, and from it drew this portrait of Connery. I think that's an amiable face, and I think Connery comes through the years and old print as a likable man in spite of his deficient sense of constitutional rights and his bad jokes: a very human man. And in spite of the Times's increasing criticism of Connery from this day on, I think someone on that paper liked him, too: for in a story headed "Who is Coroner Connery?" they said:

  "People are asking eagerly about the antecedents of Coroner Connery, who by his singular mode of conducting the Bond-street investigations, and queer, classical jests, has forced himself so suddenly and prominently upon public attention. Edward Downes Connery is somewhere in the vicinity of 50 years of age. He is an Irishman by birth, and though he has resided in this City the past twenty years, still retains a rich and resonant Irish brogue, which he always delivers with a startling emphasis. His r's are peculiarly emphatic and thrilling. He is married and the father of a large family. He is about the medium height, stout build, and of florid complexion [which the portrait doesn't suggest, to me]. He practices medicine at times, and is a good printer, we presume, from the fact that he formerly superintended the job-printing department of the Herald…." He had been elected coroner two years earlier, said the Times, "ahead of his ticket by a great many votes….

  "Dr. Connery is a general favorite," the Times man continued, "being regarded by all who know him best as 'a jolly fellow, and good company, always fond of a joke,' which, as those who have read the pending Burdell investigation well know, he never fails to crack, be it good or bad, and upon all and every occasion.

  "The Doctor, too, is up in his classics, as no one who ever had five minutes' conversation with him, can for a moment doubt.

  "He is always ready with an extempore speech, many of which he delivered in the suburbs during the last campaign, to crowds of the unterrified.

  "In a word, E. Downes Connery is E. Downes Connery, and walks a little lame."

  "The City is in a fever of excitement. Nothing is talked of or apparently thought of except the murder," said the Tribune, "and from a few hours' observation one would reasonably conclude that the entire adult population had resolved themselves into an immense Coroner, with a million sleepless eyes and five hundred thousand tireless tongues, each … having no other earthly function than to search out the perpetrators…."

  But the Tribune seemed to think this great public coroner needed guidance in reaching a decision, and they provided it. "It has been ascertained," they said, referring not to any testimony yet heard but merely to some gossip their man had picked up, "that on the morning when the murder was discovered, Mr. Eckel left the house at an early and unusual hour [and] Mrs. Cunningham followed in a carriage, and he stood talking with her half an hour or more at the carriage door, opposite his factory. He was seen to give her a roll of bills. This trans
pired before breakfast." No speculation about why, if the lady in the carriage were Mrs. Cunningham, Eckel hadn't simply handed over the money at home.

  "The head waiter of Mr. Peteler, the confectioner," they continued, said that "Mr. Eckel, for several months past, was in the daily habit of visiting the establishment of Mr. Peteler, where he used to meet a lady whom he, the waiter, considered to be one of the nymphs of the pave, about noon, and partaking of refreshments with her." This time it was the lady, said the waiter, who would slip Eckel the money to pay the bill.

  In contrast to Eckel, Dr. Harvey Burdell had been an honorary member of the Philadelphia Medical Society, member of both the city and county medical societies, and of the New-York Historical and Statistical Society, a director of the Artisans' Bank, a prominent and well-to-do member of the dental profession, and coauthor of a book on dentistry published by Scathard & Adams, the same Adams who was later "murdered by John C. Colt in the house situated at the corner of Chambers and Broadway now occupied by Delmonico," this industrious reporter added. The Tribune was Horace Greeley's paper, and I hope he paid that man well; on this kind of supplementary stuff the Trib usually left the Times at the post.

  Burdell's reputation was apparently impeccable, but of Emma Cunningham, whose "maiden name was Hempstead … It is reported that she has lived in Twenty-Fifth-street in this city, in Saratoga and elsewhere, under the name of Mrs. Cunningham, Mrs. Gatouse, and Mrs. Douglass. Strange stories are told of the character of her establishments; but"—a nice touch—"such rumors are not sufficiently well grounded to warrant their publication. That she went to Dr. Burdell's house in the capacity of his mistress is obvious…."