Forgotten News

by Jack Finney

  "Mr. Eckel… said that perhaps there were few men whose morality would stand the test of a rigid scrutiny; but he argued that they were not therefore to be set down as murderers…. Where was his motive … ? He never knew Dr. Burdell or Mrs. Cunningham until … he saw by an advertisement that he could obtain room and board at No. 31 Bond Street…." Even then he hardly knew Dr. Burdell beyond "the usual forms of recognition when they passed each other in the hall. The idea that he could have personated Dr. Burdell in the marriage with Mrs. Cunningham, in two weeks after he entered their house was simply absurd. And as to his murdering him for the sake of a middle-aged widow with five children, and the chance of a fortune of only $33,000 at furthest, why, it was so absurd that were people not blinded by excitement and prejudice, they would scout the idea as preposterous. All of this was said in a frank, manly way by the accused, without any bitterness or anger, and when our reporter bade him adieu he felt impelled to believe that his innocence would yet be established."

  It could be that the Tribune reporter was young, Eckel able to impress him more than he should have been. But I think Eckel sounds persuasive, to some degree, and when I'd finished reading the interview I had the same doubts.

  Neither Times nor Tribune seemed to take Snodgrass or the possibility of his having been involved very seriously. The Times said: "Snodgrass … was removed from the Fifteenth Ward Station-house [where I guess they'd been allowing him to sleep] to the Tombs [yesterday] afternoon. When he left the Station-house he was very desponding, and we were told by the officers present asserted his innocence, and attacked the character of… the witness who swore to his purchase of the dagger, in language so gross as to be quite unfit for publication."

  "He seems to have laid aside his devil-may-care manner," the Tribune man wrote, "and realizes that he has got himself into a serious scrape. That he had no hand in the murder, nor knows anything about it, is very generally believed. He is altogether too shallow to conceal it if he was in any way concerned in the crime…. Mr. Snodgrass is confined in the third corridor of the male prison, above Mr. Eckel. His cheerfulness seems to have departed with his banjo and his liberty."

  A few more bubbles from the back burner. When the grand jury met on Tuesday it took the advice of District Attorney Hall, and solved the problem of how Farrell's wife was to feed her family for the next couple of months on the five and a half dollars which had been collected for her: it let Farrell go home, "relying on his honesty to reappear when needed." It let Hannah and Mary go, too, and said that Augusta and Helen would be free as soon as it had heard their testimony.

  A reporter went around to Mott Street and learned that: "The neighbors give Farrell a most excellent character, but they seem now to have some jealousy of him. He has had money subscribed to him—he had been before the Grand Jury, 'and shure he's goin' to hang the man that killed the Doctor.' So Farrell has got a lift in life, and his old companions watch him narrowly to see if he is getting proud."

  And, hunting for something, anything, to print, a reporter dropped in on Emma Cunningham again, learning nothing much, but "… the two sons of the unfortunate woman were in the gallery, outside of her cell-door, and their presence alone must have been sufficient to unnerve her. They are very handsome children, the oldest is but eleven [ten, actually], and the younger but nine years old. It was a touching sight to see the little fellow looking around with wondering eyes upon the strange scene."

  At 31 Bond: "Some wretched vagabonds" had been "persecuting [the Cunningham girls] by sending to their address obscene valentines." And there were rumors going around town that the girls had been seen promenading Broadway with George Snodgrass. Strumming his banjo, no doubt.

  Two days before the grand jury returned its verdict, the Times apparently got so desperate for something to print about the case that they published "Midnight in the House of Murder," by Elizabeth Oakes Smith. It was prefaced by this fragment of testimony:

  "Mr. Ullman.—The hall was very dark—the gas turned off.

  "Coroner.—Had it never been so before?

  "Mr. Ullman.—Oh, yes; but it seemed unusually dark."

  Then the poem:

  "Up the staircase—slowly—slowly Walked the weary feet that night; Hollow echoes answer lonely To the feet, however light. Up the staircase, to the broadstair, Turns he sharply to the right, There is anguish in the still air, There are shapes athwart the sight.

  "No, the eye has only treasured, Diamond-like, a hidden ray; And by this, the darkness measured, Shows it darkest ere the day. Was that sigh a human sighing? Was that groan from human heart? Was that sob from lips in dying? There's a whisper—'We depart.'

  "Murky thick, the blackness seemeth," began the next stanza, and Miss Smith's poem continued for ten more.

  ""Coroner Connery Impeached," the Tribune headed a story saying Connery had been served with papers from the governor ordering him to answer charges of conduct unbecoming a public officer during the inquest. This followed by only a week the grand jury's indictment of Emma Cunningham and John Eckel for murder (the girls discharged, Snodgrass held as a witness, but out on bail). Tough-minded attorney Henry Clinton hadn't waited for a trial to defend his clients, but attacked immediately. And now, long before his clients' fate could be left to a jury, he took their case straight to the public from which the trial jury would be selected: it was Henry Clinton who made the complaint that now meant Edward Downes Connery would be attacked first.

  And then—Clinton was given still another forum in which to swing public opinion around, if he could, before his clients' trial for murder began. Some of Harvey Burdell's relatives went to the court of Surrogate Alexander Bradford, and asked to be given control of Burdell's property. But Bradford pointed out that if Burdell had a widow she had rights to the property, too. And Emma Cunningham, waiting in the Tombs to be tried for her life, insisted she was the Doctor's widow and she wanted his property: all she could get. So now Surrogate Bradford had to hear testimony, and then decide whether Harvey Burdell had really married Emma Cunningham. If Henry Clinton could prove or even strongly suggest that the marriage had happened, it could not only bring his client a widow's share of a lot of money and property, but go a long way, it seems to me, toward a verdict of not guilty at the trial.

  He made a good start, by getting Uriah Marvine, the minister who'd officiated at the supposedly false wedding, to say that the more he thought about it, "the more I am convinced that the man I married was Harvey Burdell." While even before Connery's hearing could begin, Mrs. Cunningham announced to an Express reporter visiting her cell for an interview that Connery had ordered her stripped naked during the inquest. What about the note she'd signed, which seemed to deny this? That was a misinterpretation: what she'd meant was that Dr. Woodward had taken no indecent liberties, but she had been forced to strip "to her toes."

  At the surrogate's hearing Henry Clinton—who apparently had been scouting around looking into a lot of things—said that the inquest witness who had confirmed Farrell's testimony was insane. His whole story was "the morbid concoction of a diseased brain." A Times reporter now went to the man's house—as he could have done long since; as Connery could have done—and talked to the man's sister and daughter. It was true, they said; he'd been insane for years, and they didn't believe his story of seeing Farrell on the front steps of number 31 the night of the murder; didn't even think he'd been out of the house at all that night.

  A day or so later, Henry Clinton began the Connery hearing by reading aloud the charges he was bringing: to be printed in the newspapers where prospective jurors could read them. His charges concerned Connery's "gross impertinence and bestiality to the witnesses, illegal detention" of Mrs. Cunningham, "witticisms and indecorous remarks … repeated with grins and grimaces," and usurpation of police powers.

  Every lighthearted remark of poor Edward Connery's now showed up in Clinton's formal charges: "I knew, Mary," he had said to Mary Donaho, "that you carried your tail behind you …"; to Mr. Cyre
nius Stevens, "Probably [Mrs. Cunningham] was peeking through a crack, and having a view of the elephant"; to the witness who said Mrs. Cunningham's husband had been "… a manufacturer of liquid death," the coroner had "echo[ed] the words, syllable by syllable, 'A man-u fact-tu rer of li-quid death? I will put that down for the benefit of the Temperance Society"; and "Did you ever give her the wink yourself?" …" 'Is it my death warrant?' 'Yes, sir, your death warrant' " … ; and to Mrs. Stephen Maine, when she gave her name, "This is a main chance of making a conquest, anyway."

  Apparently no courtroom procedure involving Connery would be without its weird moments. Dr. Maine, in reply to questions about the coroner's famous remark to his wife, said Connery had looked over at the reporters when he said it, and winked his eye, and laughed.

  "How often did you see the Coroner wink … ?" Connery's lawyer asked. "As often as I do now? (Mr. Jordan winked several times)."

  "Yes, but the wink I referred to was a different kind of wink…."

  "… a long wink or a short wink?"

  "I can't understand the question. Whether you mean by closing the eye and keeping it there, or quick."

  "What was there peculiar in that wink?"

  "… It was a cunning shrewd wink…."

  What kind of wink was that?

  "Closing one eye quick, with a contraction of the muscle at the same time."

  The Times thought that these "proceedings, if not very interesting, were at least very funny. Whether they will redeem the lack of dignity complained of in the aforesaid inquest, or add fresh ridicule to that investigation, may, at present, be considered a doubtful matter."

  The New York Sun now reported that George Snodgrass had been seen playing his banjo in Cienfuegos, Cuba; and Snodgrass wrote next day —from New York—denying it. While out in the streets, said the Times: "The mud … grows deeper and more like putty every hour. The people, finding indignation entirely ineffective, are trying to shame Ebling [the city official responsible for cleaning the streets] into a sense of duty. In scores of places, yesterday, they had piled the mud into tombs, mounds and graves, out of which the hats and boots of effigies protruded, and over the heaps placed inscriptions in shocking verse, commenting on the undiscovered virtues of Mayor Wood, and the wretched inefficiency of Ebling…."

  On March 31 at 31 Bond the furnishings of the house were auctioned off. Once more the street outside was jammed, "more impassable than in the best days of the inquest, when Coroner Connery wore the mask of Joe Miller." (I think Miller was author of a joke book.) The ladies "outnumbered the gentlemen, three to one, and were determined to get in. They pushed, they elbowed, they squeezed, they fell back on their prerogative, and asserted their women's rights, they strongly went in for going in, and in they went. For a long time nothing was visible but a mass of ladyhood, crowding in, to see the blood stains on the wall of the room where the murder was committed, to talk and to listen to the bids for the furniture…. only three ladies made bids, while seven or eight hundred talked, and the rest, a dozen or so, listened. Many a man … thanked the Fates … that there were not more than five dozen of metallic hooped petticoats.

  "The gentlemen … were as eager to get in as the ladies, and many a lady's dress suffered in consequence." In fact, "some of the women … came out in a form ludicrous in the extreme, their dresses hanging in all manner of zigzags, from the bending of the hoops in their skirts."

  Up on the top floor, barred to visitors by cops at the foot of the stairs, the Cunningham children sat waiting it out, and the auction began with the sale of the hair mattress from Dr. Burdell's bed, which went for eight dollars. A shout was heard, cops moved in, nabbed a pickpocket, then the auctioneer sold the Doctor's bedstead for nine dollars. His bureau brought $9.25, and they put up his books, one of the bidders giving his name, whether truthfully or not, as Ebling, the city official who was failing to keep the streets clean, and "there rose cries of 'turn him out,' 'put him in the street,' 'smother him in the dust.' " Then they sold the Doctor's blankets and sheets, "bringing good prices." And "a pair of glass shades, covering sections of the human jaw modeled in wax," and "purchased for five dollars and three shillings [auctioneers do not recognize the decimal currency yet], and then Mr. Ebling, or the audacious imposter usurping his name, purchased a foetus in a glass case for eighteen shillings. Again, at the sound of the hated name, the cry burst forth, the windows were forced open, and for a few moments there was a terrible suspense. Were the indignant crowd near the windows about to hurl Ebling forth into the streets he had left so dirty?"

  They sold off a couple of skulls, Dr. Roberts bought a bottle of chloroform for one dollar, they sold the bureau with looking glass, and the bedroom carpet "went for six shillings and sixpence a yard. Dr. Roberts bought the Doctor's electrical machine for three dollars and one shilling, and somebody gave fifty cents for the Doctor's flesh brush…."

  Chairs, a rosewood secretary, a mahogany dental work case, the operating chair used by the inquest witnesses, and the Doctor's dental tools went next, including some "scrapers," and when these were announced "a cry was raised for Ebling, but he, or the individual representing him," was gone. " 'He is gone to scrape Broadway,' said the crowd."

  The marble center table past which Dr. Burdell staggered as he fought for his life brought seven dollars, and a "dental case, filled with teeth," brought six.

  The front-hall carpet, worn by hundreds of feet during the inquest, went for its cost when new. They sold mirrors, and "some wretched landscapes," all for good prices. It turned out, however, that a lot of the bids were fake, the stuff uncalled for, and they had to hold a second "cash-down" auction later. But: "The blood-stained carpet of the room where the mysterious murder was committed … was among the first articles removed after the sale."

  Once the furniture and the crowds had left 31 Bond, Mrs. Cunningham's sister moved in. She was Mrs. Ann Barnes, a widow in her late twenties, described as "a low-sized woman"—meaning short—who "looks like a servant girl in dress as in other things," but "not at all in any respect like Mrs. Cunningham." She walked with a limp, and it sounds to me as though she needed a home. Possibly also she was brought in to take care of the boys.

  The two hearings continued. Connery's lawyer "admitted that the Coroner had used the phrase, 'You carry your tail behind you,' to witness Mary Donaho," but not "out of disrespect… nor from levity. It was used as a compliment to her integrity—she being an Irish girl and familiar with the story of the Irishman who lost his cow, and who could only say, in describing her, that she was a very honest cow and carried her tail behind her. On that story some doggerel had been written that was well known all over Ireland. One verse was:

  " 'Teddy Brady lost his cow, He didn't know where to find her,

  And the only mark he had on her, was She carried her tail behind her.' "

  If Henry Clinton had a rebuttal to this defense, it wasn't reported; and a day or so later when Mary Donaho was on the stand, and was asked about the coroner's infamous remark, she said she hadn't even heard him make it.

  The hearing ended, and Governor King announced that the evidence against Connery was insufficient; as for his "imprisonment" of Mrs. Cunningham and John Eckel, the governor thought "even more stringent deprivation of their liberty would have been beneficial to the ends of justice."

  So Coroner Connery was exonerated, but I don't think Henry Clinton cared: I think he'd scored points with at least some of the twelve men somewhere in the city who would soon be trying his clients. Nor did he push for a decision at the surrogate's hearing on whether Emma Cunningham's supposed marriage to Dr. Burdell had really happened or not. In fact, Clinton often delayed this hearing deliberately, getting frequent postponements, some for as long as a week, some even longer. I think he didn't want a decision before the trial, for if the surrogate decided the marriage was false, it could convict his clients.

  I also believe Henry Clinton thought Emma Cunningham was innocent; that she'd convinced him, if nobody el
se. Because years later, in the late nineties, he published his memoirs, including a long account of this case, still insisting, in a way that makes me think he believed it, that Emma Cunningham had been innocent. And now, in the days left before the district attorney would try to hang her, Clinton continued to work hard: industriously contriving defenses for the evidence against her, and he developed some ingenious ones. A good lawyer, a little humorless I suspect after reading his memoirs, but Mrs. Cunningham hadn't hired him for laughs.

  As the town waited, almost holding its collective breath, for what would be its most sensational trial in many years, other trials took place almost unnoticed—most of them not five minutes long. In the Court of General Sessions James Brady was tried for pocket-picking, and almost instantly found guilty. He was "about 12 years old," and his "guilt was fully proved," said the brief newspaper account. "The Recorder inquired whether the prisoner had ever before been arrested. One of the attendants answered that he had, and for a similar offense. The lad cried bitterly, and declared the attendant mistaken. His mother and sister stood beside the little 'knuck' at the bar, and begged that he might be forgiven, saying that it was not he but his brother, who had been arrested once before. After receiving a solemn promise from the mother to take better care of her precocious child in the future, the Recorder suspended judgment, and Master Brady was permitted to depart.

  "Mary Riley was arraigned for an assault and battery on Mary McDay. The complainant's eyes were black and her face much swollen. She swore the injuries were inflicted upon her by the prisoner without any just cause or provocation. She told the circumstances of the case very fully. Mrs. Riley made her own defense, but it was not a satisfactory one, and she was sentenced to thirty days' imprisonment in the Penitentiary."