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Who's Who
Emma Cunningham

         Emma Cunningham was born in 1818 in Brooklyn New York. When she met Dr. Burdell was a young widow with five children. She started out as the housekeeper in No. 31 Bond Street and a year later Dr. Burdell leased the property to her early in 1856. She held that the two were married on October 15th, 1856, but this was never proven [1] [2]. 

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        When Dr. Burdell's body was found on January 31st, 1857, Emma Cunningham was the prime suspect due to her left-handedness & supposed quarrels with Dr. Burdell. She was found not guilty, then in a failed attempt to prove she carried Dr. Burdell's child she staged a fake birth. Cunningham lived the rest of her life in poverty & died in 1887 [3]. 

  1.  “Emma Cunningham Trail: 1857,” American Law and Legal Information Law Library, Accessed September 20, 2020, https://law.jrank.org/pages/2547/Emma-Cunningham-Trail-1857.html#google_vignette 

  2. Tom Miller, “The Gruesome Murder Mystery at No. 31 Bond Street,” Daytonian in Manhattan (blog), October 31, 2016, http://daytoninmanhattan.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-gruesome-murder-mystery-at-no-31.html

  3. The People v. Cunningham (1857), https://cite.case.law/park-crim-rep/6/398/

  4. “Henry Lauren Clinton,” Historical Society of the New York Courts, Accessed September 20, 2020, https://history.nycourts.gov/figure/henry-clinton/

  5. "Abraham Oakey Hall," In Dictionary of American Biography, New York, NY: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1936, Gale In Context: Biography (accessed September 25, 2020). https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/BT2310012096/BIC?u=gain40375&sid=BIC&xid=fe2ed5b9.

  6. Ellen Horan. “The Story Behind the Story: ‘31 Bond Street,’ by Ellen Horan”, RapSheet (blog), March 30, 2010. http://therapsheet.blogspot.com/2010/03/story-behind-story-31-bond-street-by.html​

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