#276 Murder on Bond Street: Who Killed Dr. Burdell?

The Bowery Boys: New York City History

Tom Meyers

Places & Travel, History, Documentary, Society & Culture

4.7 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 16 November 2018

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On January 31, 1857, a prominent dentist named Harvey Burdell was found brutally murdered -- strangled, then stabbed 15 times -- in his office and home and Bond Street, a once-trendy street between Broadway and the Bowery. The suspects for this horrific crime populated the rooms of 31 Bond Street including Emma Cunningham, the former lover of Dr. Burdell and a woman with many secrets to hide; the boarder John Eckel who had a curious fondness for canaries; and the banjo-playing George Snodgrass, whose personal obsessions may have evolved in depraved ways. The mechanics of solving crime were much different in the mid-19th century than they are today, and the mysterious particulars of this investigation seem strange and even unacceptable to us today. A suspect would stand trial for Dr. Burdell's death, yet the shocking events which followed -- including a sinister deception and a faked childbirth -- would prove that truth is stranger than fiction. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/boweryboys

Transcript

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0:00.0	Episode 276 of the Bowry Boys.
0:02.9	A murder on Bond Street.
0:05.1	Who killed Dr. Burdell?
0:07.3	Hey, it's the Bowry Boys.
0:09.0	Hey.
0:10.0	Support for the Bowry Boys is provided by our listeners.
0:13.6	Join us for as little as $1 a month by visiting patreon.com slash Bowry Boys.
0:22.0	Hi there, welcome to the Bowry Boys. This is Greg Young.
0:25.0	And this is Tom Myers.
0:26.4	And today we are presenting a tale of a murder most foul, a mystery that dominated the newspaper headlines in the winter of 1857.
0:37.4	Involving the brutal killing of a dentist named Harvey Burdell in a townhouse between Broadway and the Bowry,
0:46.4	between them in more ways than one, shall we say, in a townhouse on Bond Street.
0:52.4	This is a tale among other things of a city that is growing larger and more insecure in a certain way by the arrival of so many strangers.
1:02.4	This was a murder that shook the city and the nation.
1:06.4	How could somebody who was so seemingly respectable be so brutally murdered in his own home?
1:14.4	Now this is truly a murder mystery in the tradition of a page turner or a television drama.
1:21.4	Or a board game. It's going to feel a little bit like clue.
1:25.4	Well, it's true. However, this being real life, it is very complicated.
1:30.4	And so what we are going to be doing today is laying out these particulars of the crime, the very unique investigation that is very unique to the mid 19th century.
1:42.4	And of course, some of the main suspects was this a crime of passion or a crime of jealousy?
1:50.4	So join us as we investigate the mysterious circumstances surrounding the murder of Dr. Burdell.
2:00.4	Alright, Greg, you said that this is a page turner.
	...

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