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The BLOODY DEED of 1857
The Merchant's House Museum must be credited and thanked for the initial idea of turning this true story into a play. The playwright, Elise Gainer, author of Ghosts and Murders of Manhattan jumped at the chance to delve into the notorious crime. All of the events in the script are drawn from inquest and trial testimony, newspaper accounts (New York Herald, New York Daily Tribune, New York Daily Times), various historical pamphlets, and the books Celebrated Trials by Henry Lauren Clinton and Butchery on Bond Street: Sexual Politics and Butchery on Bond Street" Sexual Politics & The Burdell-Cunningham Case in Ate-bellum New York by Benjamin Feldman. Much of the inquest and trial testimony is verbatim from the public record.
The play evolved through readings and the expert advice of Broadway Writers Moisés Kaufman and Ken Davenport.
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