A pool of blood, 15 stab wounds, a prominent dentist dead, his mistress suspected, and New York City is enthralled. This is the tragic yet true tale told by Benjamin Feldman in his book “Butchery on Bond Street: Sexual Politics & The Burdell-Cunningham Case in Ante-Bellum New York.� This first-time author has chosen a mighty subject, in a period when America and Gotham were at a crossroads, with the Civil War only a few years off. I talked to Feldman about his book, the class and gender politics behind it, and why it used to be easier to get away with murder.

“Butchery on Bond Street� is my pick for book title of the year — Was this natural or a headline? How did you come up with it?

Setting a title for a book is in a way one of the more trivial projects, and then it turns into one of the biggest projects of any book you ever write. You chew it over like a cow. You talk to your wife, you talk to your husband, your partner, whatever your circumstances are, you bounce it off your agent, your editor. It certainly didn’t come out of a box. It just sort of settled, became natural, and this one, I confess to having come up with myself.

Well, I get a lot of books to review and when I received something called, “Butchery on Bond Street� it really jumped out at me. And let’s not forget the subtitle: “Sexual Politics & The Burdell-Cunningham Case in Ante-bellum New York.� Give us a feel for Ante-bellum New York.

When I say Antebellum New York with respect to this book, I mean the immediate years that precede the firing on Fort Sumter in April 1861... it really means the decade before the Civil War broke out. Antebellum New York, and by this I mean Brooklyn and Manhattan in those days, was an unbelievable place. An exponentially growing industrial economy, a place — particularly Manhattan — that was immensely pro-Southern.

All of the fancy hotels had moved “uptown� to the Astor Place area within the past decade. The fancy department stores were all located on the stretch of Broadway south of Union Square and north of Houston Street. Restaurants like Delmonico’s, entertainment venues, the Metropolitan Hotel, the theater district of Manhattan was located south of Union Square and north of Canal Street. And what ran New York — as you know if you go to the New-York Historical Society to look at the second part of the Slavery Exhibit — cotton ran New York. The trade in cotton of this country was located in three locations: Charleston, South Carolina, Savannah, Georgia, and in dollar amount, overall the greatest [was] New York City. Southern planters, cotton brokers, lived, they wined, they dined in New York, and this is what drove a huge amount of New York’s economy. And that was who were hanging around Astor Place and all these hotels. A real “Bonfire of the Vanities� was going on in Ante-bellum New York.

And in 1857, when this crime happened, I would presume that there were a lot of corpses floating in the East River and the Hudson. Why did this one murder captivate the city so?

It’s interesting. I’ll say two things about that. The murder rate in New York City — and I’m talking from statistics that I dug out of some dusty old pamphlets in municipal reference libraries — with the exception of what’s happened in New York City since Mayor Giuliani’s reign started, the murder rate in New York City in the Ante-bellum years was far, far lower on a per capita basis than it had been through the 1980s and 1990s in New York City.

And what’s remarkable about this one murder, and what this book pays tremendous attention to, was that an upper middle class so-called gentleman was murdered in the sanctity of his own home, in his dental clinic, by the woman, his ex-lover, who had taken revenge upon him. That was unknown in 19th century New York, and even the decade or two afterwards.

Upper-middle-class men and middle-class men got away with whatever they wanted to, as well as wealthy men, in terms of being sexual predators. Women were paid, and sometimes not even paid, just to go away, to disappear. In contrast, in the lower classes, if the woman was done wrong or felt she was done wrong, whatever the case, lower- class men were routinely, routinely, murdered by their lovers, their mistresses, by their wives. And what made this crime — which shook this town, and really shook this nation — is that this woman took revenge on an upper-class man who was a sexual predator.

There have been comparisons to the O.J. Simpson murders, which made me sigh and wonder. And then, as I read it, it came to life.

The parallels are really remarkable. In O.J.’s case, you have a man who murdered a woman, at least that’s the result of the case after the family of Nicole Brown sued O.J., despite the fact that he was acquitted in criminal court. And the O.J. case dominated the media for six, seven, 10 months thereafter. And, in the case of Dr. Burdell, this time the man got murdered and revenge was taken. This case absolutely dominated the news in New York City for months on end in 1857. Just go to the library or the Internet and go to The Times or The Brooklyn Daily Eagle. Look in the upper left hand corner of the first page of the daily newspapers on any day from February 1, 1857, until late August, and you will find this case being reported. The murder, the coroner’s inquest, incarceration, the murder trial in May, the circuit court case that was being conducted in June through July, the bogus baby scandal hit the papers on August 5, 1857 — This was front-page news.

Well, you’ve certainly earned your worth as a first-time author. You worked in real estate and law before — This was quite a retirement project.

I tell you, this has been such fun. This project has been a labor of love. I always wanted to be a writer. After I married, had a family and a business, and when I could finally devote full-time, one thing on my plate, this was my choice.

This took you seven years, and it shows. It’s well annotated and full of footnotes. Is your wife ready for your next project and what could that be?

I think she is. This book, although it’s been seven years since I started the project, it’s taken about half my time, writing and researching along the way. There are many things in the fire, and glimpses of those can been seen on the blog I keep, www.new-york-wanderer. blogspot.com [note, more information and ordering for this book can also be found on www.butcheryonbond street.blogspot.com].

What is it about this thirst for death we have? The cigar girl that Poe made famous, Lizzie Borden — Why do these murders from a century and longer ago still captivate us today?

That’s a tough question. I think the main part is curiousness. The opportunity to get close to the gruesome, get close to light and shadow, I think is something that appeals to readers. And what is different about 19th Century murder cases and circumstances of lust and greed and deceit that surround them, as opposed to today’s, is that the 19th century and particularly the mid- and the late 19th century, there was every place for the perpetrators to hide. Being anonymous, changing your name, getting away with murder, was a lot easier in the mid- to late 19th century, as well as sexual predation, than it is today. Today the smokinggun.com is going to nail you, your name’s going to be up on Craigslist; there is no place to hide today.

© Brooklyn Daily Eagle 2006
All materials posted on brooklyneagle.com are protected by United States copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast without written permission, which can be sought by emailing arturc@att.net.

Main Office 718 422 7400