Forgotten News

by Jack Finney

  "I talked to the Captain until we reached the corner of Centre and Broome streets, when I felt something at my back like a person behind me. On turning round I found the lady standing at the door in the act, as I thought, of running away, or in the act of getting off without stopping the car. I then took her by the arm and pulled the bell, saying, 'Madam, you must not get off till the car stops.' The car stopped immediately and the lady got off. She never turned her head until she reached the sidewalk. She then turned her head, apparently scrutinized us both and passed down towards Elm-street."

  Speight rode on for half a block, then hopped off, and—the hooded lady still in sight—followed her as she walked down Broome Street toward Elm. She walked on past Elm, Speight said, then "turned suddenly and went up Elm-street on the west side." Speight stood watching from the Elm Street corner until the woman "disappeared in a house." Others, he knew, were stationed to watch that house, so Speight turned away, and went on back to his Bond Street post.

  Dr. Uhl stood waiting at the front door of 190 Elm, as he had been for some time now. He wore "a white hat and white pants, and a dark coat," De La Montagnie had noticed. Said Uhl, "… Finally the lady came, dressed in black, having a black hood over her head, partially disguising her features. I asked her if she was the person that came after the basket. She made no reply, but merely shook her handkerchief, and walked upstairs with me to the room." This was an outer room, in which Nurse Regan waited with Baby. In an adjoining connecting room lay mother Gilchrest in his nightcap, in case the visitor decided to walk in; and, said Oakey Hall: "The apothecary groaned satisfactorily." I assume in falsetto.

  "The light burnt dimly on the centre table" of the outer room, and "the door which opened into the adjoining room displayed the foot of a cot on which the sick mother was supposed to be prostrate. Mrs. Cunningham only glanced in, but a glance must have satisfied her all was right; the nurse, Mary Regan, sat with the child in her lap, the basket at her feet.

  As Mrs. Cunningham presented herself she was asked if she came for the child, as agreed upon, she shook her handkerchief in reply, the next instant the 'little thing' was placed in the basket and handed through the partially opened door …."

  The lady in black just as quickly took the basketed baby, and, said Dr. Uhl, "went off with it. I was led to believe from her general appearance that it was Mrs. Burdell herself who came after the child. The child and afterbirth were in the basket. I saw her go off with it."

  Across the street stood Patrolman Walsh and Dr. De La Montagnie, but: "The street is narrow," as the D.A. said later, "was rather dark in the moonlight, and Walsh and Dr. De La Montagnie, in their anxiety, did not see her come out, but they were soon satisfied, by the lights in No. 190 being put out and by preparations made to shift the scene, that she had gone."

  The realization must have come quickly because Walsh and the doctor now hurried through Prince Street to the Bowery, and there "on the block between Bleecker and Bond-street, coming up towards Bond-street," De La Montagnie said he "saw coming in the distance a great basket, borne by a woman with dark clothes, a very peculiar dress like that of a nun." He "passed very near to her, but could not see her face." However, he "recognized the basket distinctly as one which [he] had that afternoon procured from the house of the District Attorney, and which [he] had last seen twenty minutes previously in premises No. 190 Elm-street." The doctor "followed on the other side of Bond Street …," saw the woman with the basket turn into 31 Bond, and then encountered Captain Speight, back at his post across the street from 31. The captain, too, "saw the same person, having on the same dress, who had previously left the house, return with a basket … and go down the area of the premises No. 31 Bond Street." And now with Mrs. Cunningham back home, Speight hurried toward Broadway to let our old friend Captain Dilk know what was happening. Dilk's post was in front of Burton's Theater on Broadway, where he could look straight down Bond Street. Captain Hopkins had just joined him, having seen nothing in the alley behind 31, and: "We had been there but a moment," said Hopkins, "and were preparing to return to the station-house, when Captain Speight approached almost out of breath. He told us that he had 'piped' a woman from 31 Bond," followed her to Elm, and now she'd come back with a basket.

  "On hearing this, said Hopkins, "I went back with Captain Speight. We stood nearly opposite No. 31 Bond-street, and watched to see who should go in or out." At some point Dr. De La Montagnie left to go join D.A. Oakey Hall, I don't know where. (I see De La Montagnie as the excited amateur so revved up by what he was in on tonight that he couldn't stay in one place.)

  The two police captains stood across the street watching 31, and presently, Hopkins said, they "saw a little man go in." This was Dr. Catlin; he'd left the house to go get a prescription, possibly when Speight had left his post to follow Mrs. Cunningham.

  Dr. Uhl had gone home after the hooded lady left 190 Elm with the baby. There he found the message George Wilt had left on his slate. Now the police captains watched Dr. Uhl walk up the steps of 31, and pull the bell.

  The bell woke George Wilt, he said, asleep in the front parlor. He got up, and let Uhl in, and Uhl felt impelled to explain that he'd been out of town, and had just come back. "I went upstairs to Mrs. Burdell's room," Uhl said, "and saw Mrs. Burdell lying on her bed. Her sister and Dr. Catlin were in the room, and the child was lying in one corner of the room. Mrs. Burdell pretended to have all the symptoms of severe labor." Since she couldn't have been trying to fool anybody in the room, I suppose she meant to be heard elsewhere in the house. "Dr. Catlin brought out a tin pail containing a quantity of blood," said Uhl, "which he mixed with water and spread over some sheets. He bloodied his hands with it…."

  Little Ann Barnes, Emma Cunningham's sister, was now sent downstairs—not easy with her lameness—to ask George Wilt to go get his sister-in-law, Jane Bell, the nurse. "They pretended she was not in the secret," said Uhl. Across the street the police noted the departure of George Wilt, Hopkins's report said, and Captain Speight followed, and "piped" him as far as Second Avenue, and then returned.

  It seems to me that Dr. Uhl was mistaken in thinking Jane Bell was in on the plot; because if she was, then who was it they were trying to fool with the bloody sheets? Not Catlin and not Uhl, and hardly sister Ann Barnes. And the Cunningham girls were upstairs asleep. I think the whole setup may have been for the benefit of Jane Bell, a nurse, who would then swear, if the need arose, that she had arrived to see every evidence that a child had just been born.

  And as they waited for nurse Bell, they seemed to prepare for exactly this. While Emma Cunningham got up out of bed, and went into the next-door room—in which Harvey Burdell had been knifed to death—and had herself some supper, the supper Helen had left there for her, I imagine, they got out the phony placenta, and left it where it could be seen; they took the half-empty bucket of blood and the baby's shabby Bellevue clothes, and locked them in a closet of the room where Emma Cunningham sat eating; and then Dr. Catlin sent Ann Barnes limping down the stairs again, to the kitchen, to carry up a washtub partly filled with water.

  Wilt soon returned with Jane Bell, who was "a middleaged, plain looking woman," said the Times, "with nothing peculiarly striking in manners or address, for one of her avocation"—which seems an odd comment to me: maybe nurses will understand it. Apparently Wilt and Jane Bell had to ring the bell, because Dr. Uhl went down, "Let them in, and the nurse came upstairs just as Dr. Catlin was removing the bloody sheets from Mrs. Cunningham and her sister was washing the child"— I suppose in the washtub she'd just carried up here. To me the delay in washing the child and removing the wet bloody sheets from Mrs. Cunningham, while waiting for George Wilt to walk over to Second Avenue and come back with Jane Bell, again suggests that it was Jane Bell for whom the performance was staged.

  Nurse Bell said that when she came into the room, "Mrs. Barnes … was in the room, also Dr. Uhl and Dr. Catlin. Mrs. Cunningham was in bed, and appeared to be very sick. I took the child, and finish
ed dressing it." Who then looked just great in the refurbished layette they'd prepared for her. "I then fed it, and got it to sleep, and laid it in bed by Mrs. Cunningham." A Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper reporter quoted Emma Cunningham as saying at that moment that "she had put her trust in God, and in return He had been pleased to favor her" —a line meant, I also suppose, for Jane Bell.

  Who noted all the props. "There was a wash tub in the room containing water. I saw a towel stained with blood on the bed." The room was a stage, apparently, the set properly dressed, actors moving through their parts, speaking their lines. "I did not see any blood on the floor or elsewhere," Jane continued. "My attention was taken up with the baby. I was in the room about half an hour … Mrs. Cunningham, while I was there, spoke of having suffered great pain, and said she had a hard delivery…." During her half hour up here, Uhl said Jane Bell "performed all the operations usually performed by a nurse." And at some point, George Wilt downstairs had "heard a child cry."

  Mrs. Barnes sent Jane Bell downstairs to make some tea for Mrs. Cunningham. Catlin piled the bloody bedding and towels into the washtub, and Ann Barnes carried it back down to the kitchen, and left it there. And now, Baby in her new finery tucked in beside Emma Cunningham, the false accouchement was completed.

  Catlin told Uhl that he'd soon be going to a Bowery drugstore for something—which again suggests to me the preparation of independent testimony to confirm their story. Uhl "remained till after it was all concluded," he said, "and then I left the house, Dr. Catlin closing the door after me." Uhl walked west along the midnight street, and, Oakey Hall said, he "joined us on the corner of Broadway. He said that Catlin would be out shortly."

  Emma Cunningham got her tea. Downstairs, George Wilt told Ann Barnes that he thought he'd go home now. "As I was about leaving she said, 'Mrs. Burdell has got a fine child.' " Catlin left for the drugstore.

  The house quiet now; Emma Cunningham's new baby asleep beside her; two doctors and a nurse, she believed, prepared to swear she'd delivered it: this woman of unending determination must have believed that she'd finally pulled it off; that this house and at least two thirds of Harvey Burdell's estate would at last become hers. But outside on the streets, just as Dr. Catlin turned off Bond onto the Bowery, two cops stepped forward, and grabbed him. "He was pinioned," Oakey Hall said, "as we were informed that he had pistols." He was taken to the Fifteenth Precinct station house.

  The two captains across the street left their post about twelve, and walked over to Broadway. "Here we were met," said Hopkins, "by District-Attorney Hall, Capt. Dilk, Dr. Montagnie, Dr. Griswold (I believe) and Officers Smith, Wilson and Walsh." No mention of Dr. Uhl; I suppose he'd gone home, and glad to.

  The cluster of half a dozen cops, two doctors, and the D.A. stood there on the Broadway corner, "A conversation was had," said Hopkins, "and it was resolved to proceed at once into the house and make the necessary arrests." Back to 31 they walked, eighteen boots and shoes sounding on the late-at-night Bond Street. Then "Capt. Dilk and Dr. Montagnie went forward and rang the bell" of No. 31.

  Do you wonder, like me, what Emma Cunningham thought at that unexpected ring? "There was no answer," De La Montagnie said. "I then rang violently"—he was pulling the bell by hand, of course—"when the door was soon opened by two women, who objected to our coming in and asked what we wanted at this late hour. Inspector Dilk and I excused ourselves for the hour, and stated that we had intercepted a Doctor, who had stated there had been a delivery at the house and Inspector Dilk said he had come to see if it was all right." This sounds like one of the flimsiest excuses of all time, and the women wouldn't buy it. "One of the women said Mrs. Burdell was sick and couldn't be seen." But Captain Dilk said they insisted "to see her," and came in (shoving their way, I would bet). It was important that they see Mrs. Cunningham, they told Jane Bell in the hallway. " 'You can't see her until I ask her,' " Bell replied, according to Captain Dilk, "and as she proceeded upstairs I with the Doctor followed her ...," and it's nice to know that with cops, even in 1857, people didn't walk but "proceeded."

  Upstairs, said De La Montagnie, one of the two women "looked into the large front room and said, 'There are two gentlemen who wish to come in.' A voice said from within, 'Lock the door—they must not come—I tell you to lock that door.' We then went [shoved?] into the room, and apologized to a lady in bed, whom I … believe to be Mrs. Cunningham … and the … lady said, 'Why do you disturb me? I am very sick.' "

  Questions and answers: " 'It is my lawful legitimate child.' " The men wanted to get hold of the baby, of course, before saying why they were here. "I wished Dr. De La Montagnie to look at the child," said the Captain, "when Mrs. Cunningham and the nurse, Jane Bell, both refused." The men didn't seem to know what to do; they had to get the baby but were afraid Emma Cunningham would kill it, they said, if they tried to take it from her. Which is puzzling, but maybe they meant only that in a tug-of-war a new baby might accidentally be killed.

  They needed help, the Captain now decided, and announced that he was leaving. Ann Barnes walked downstairs with him toward the front door—on the other side of which five more cops, the D.A., and a spare doctor stood silently waiting.

  Still in the room with Emma Cunningham, Dr. De La Montagnie stood assembling courtroom evidence, I think; possibly under Oakey Hall's instructions. " 'Do you claim this child as the child of Harvey Burdell?' " he says he asked her, "and she said, 'of course—whose else should it be?' "

  Down in the front hall, Ann Barnes opened the front door, and seven men shoved their way in. The D.A. stayed downstairs while the others, said Dilk, "proceeded to the room of Mrs. Cunningham, when she was informed she was under arrest…." Still gathering formal evidence, I think, Dr. De La Montagnie then "demanded in the presence of the officers to see the umbilical cord. Mrs. Cunningham and the nurse objected. After some persuasion they consented."

  Some persuasion is right: what happened was that Dilk and another cop suddenly grabbed Emma Cunningham's arms like this, while a third cop rushed over, and snatched the baby. " 'Don't take my dear baby from me!' " De La Montagnie said she cried out.

  But they had it now, and De La Montagnie undid its new finery— What was the effect of that fantastic afternoon and long evening on that child? Did Baby Anderson grow up into a neurotic wreck?—then he checked out the lunar caustic markings and the umbilical stump. He "saw the piece of pocket-handkerchief on the cord … but the [lunar caustic] marks were not as yet visible, and would not be until the following day."

  De La Montagnie then "proceeded in a carriage in company with the District Attorney to Bellevue Hospital, taking the said infant, and about half-past one o'clock on Tuesday morning restored it to the mother … ," who was "delighted to find," said D.A. Hall, "that it had such handsome clothing." And then I hope, she rocked it, and crooned, and breast-fed it, for the rest of that nutty night.

  At 31 the cops searched the place, though they didn't go up where Helen and Georgiana lay, asleep or awake. They found the locked closet, Captain Dilk brought out "a bunch of keys, belonging to the Station-house," Hopkins said; one key worked, and they discovered the bucket of blood and the discarded Bellevue baby clothes, and Hopkins found the placenta, which he "wrapped in a napkin, which I found at the dressing-table." They found the remains of Emma Cunningham's supper in the repainted room where Harvey Burdell had died. And the tub full of bloody bedding.

  "We left the house about three o'clock in the morning," said Hopkins, "Captain Dilk taking with him to the Station-house Mrs. Bell, the nurse," who I suspect was the one innocent of the bunch. He also took along all the bloody evidence, and that poor old placenta. "Mrs. Cunningham"—lucky again—and her sister "were permitted to remain, under arrest," the house being left in charge of Roundsman William Dilk and Officers Wilson and Williams.

  Then: "We all retired," said Captain Hopkins, "jaded by our most singular night's work.

  "About 3 o'clock, when most of us had gone, one of the daughters, I learne
d, came part way downstairs."

  13

  In the morning crowds once again stood on the street and walks before number 31 Bond to watch the door and windows behind which Emma Cunningham was once more held under arrest. Six cops again guarded the place, under the command, naturally, of Captain Dilk.

  No newspapers were allowed to enter the house, and—unable to believe that Dr. Uhl might have betrayed her or simply stonewalling from instinct—Emma Cunningham hung on to her pretense. Remaining in bed, she pleaded, said the Times, "that her 'dear baby,' 'her legal baby,' 'her poor murdered Doctor's baby' might be brought to her. 'Why have they taken my baby from me,' she demanded…."

  Dr. Catlin sat in a cell, held as a witness.

  Georgiana was reported "very sick," and so was Augusta, who said she would never again set foot in 31 Bond. Helen took care of her mother.

  Within a few days the Burdell relatives flatly insisted that this time the house at 31 be cleared of Cunninghams; and ten days after the appearance of the bogus baby, as the newspapers were calling it, there happened at last what Harvey Burdell had so longed for. Her unpaid-for furniture repossessed, Emma Cunningham—never giving up—was forcibly carried from the house on a mattress, by cops. She was taken back to her old cell at the Tombs, the daughters moved to their aunt's where Augusta was, and number 31 Bond Street stood empty at last, and desolate, the crowd outside dwindling to occasional passersby glancing up at it curiously; and then, in time, dropping out of public consciousness; and finally out of all human memory.