The Bond Street Tragedy
Found dead: strangled and stabbed 15 times...
By: Kristen Thompson, Emma Carter, William Fink, Ember Manning, and Andrew Halil
[1] The Halls of Justice (also called the Tombs) on Centre Street, New York City, 1870. From the ''Manual of the Corporation of the City of New York''. Scanned from ''The Wickedest Woman in New York: Madame Restell, the Abortionist'' by Clifford Browder.
Bond Street
Before tragedy struck, Bond Street was booming with the wealthy [1]. Shortly before the murder, rowdier crowds moved into the area causing the wealthy to vacate. Many believed that Bond Street had become unsafe. This was proven in January of 1857 when a man was found murdered on that very street [2]. This tragedy was considered to be an exposure to what life in New York on Bond Street was truly like.
January 30th, 1857
The body of Harvey Burdell was found in his office in the early morning of January 31st, 1857 [3]. The body was mangled with over 15 stab wounds and appeared to have been strangled as well. Accused of this heinous act was none other than his wife Emma Cunningham [3]. This event led to a case that caught the speculation of people from around the country.
Crime in New York in the Mid-Nineteenth Century
New York, at the time of this crime, was a place full of danger. Violent crimes were up to record high numbers. During this time period from the 1820s-1890s, New York was overpopulated with many different people from many different cultures, who migrated west from Ireland and Germany. This made jobs quite hard to come by. During the 1850s, Pawnshops became a source of anxiety for city officials[4]. This was due to the sheer amount of theft committed at these pawn shops and second-hand traders.
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To better understand the mid-nineteenth century, it is good to understand the demographics that accounted for the city and its inhabitants. The population in the city was said to have grown from about sixty thousand to over one million [5].
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With such a rapid increase in population, it's a given that crime rates would increase as well, just because of the sheer amount of people that were forced to be in poverty at the time.
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Theft was not the only thing that had the citizens of New York uneasy. Violent crime was also running rampant across the state. Data collected from New York records suggest from the years of 1797-1875, ninety-three percent of the crimes were committed by men, leaving the last seven percent as women offenders. The gender of the victims was also disproportionately men compared to women, with the victims in New York during this time period being seventy-six percent male [5].
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Christopher Gray. “Bond Street From Lafayette Street to the Bowery; A Block That Offers the Quintessence of NoHo.” The New York Times. 17 Jan. (1999).
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Van Anden. "The Bond Street Murder Illustrated." The Brooklyn Eagle 16, no. 31 (1857).
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Van Anden. "The Bond Street Murder Illustrated." The Brooklyn Eagle 16, no. 31 (1857).
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Wilentz, Sean. 1979. “Crime, Poverty and the Streets of New York City: The Diary of William H. Bell (1850-51).” History Workshop, no. 6 (April): 126–31.
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Eric H. Monkkonen. 2001. Murder in New York City. Berkeley: University of California Press.
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From the ''Manual of the Corporation of the City of New York''. Scanned from ''The Wickedest Woman in New York: Madame Restell, the Abortionist'' by Clifford Browder.
[6] The Halls of Justice (also called the Tombs) on Centre Street, New York City, 1870. This is where the suspects were held for over four months awaiting their trial.