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.