Reviews for Forgotten News
Review - Forgotten News
Interesting, although Finney went into far more detail on the Emma Cunningham story than was necessary. It does show how different things were in the past.
Reviewed by Roger on 2026-04-10 07:05:05
Forgotten Newsby Jack Finney | |
| Category: |
"Crime and Disaster (non-fiction)" |
|---|---|
| Pages: | 290 |
| Year of Publication: | 1983 |
| Date Added: | 01/21/2021 |
| Date Read: | 04/10/2026 |
| Notes: | Subtitle:The Crime of the Century and Other Lost Stories While researching the 1800s for his novels, Finney came upon some real news stories that fascinated him. He tells about them in this book, mixing actual newspaper articles and woodcuts with his own observations on the events. There are six or seven short chapters on odd stories, but most of the book is taken up by two larger stories. New York widow Emma Cunningham, upset that dentist Harvey Burdell wouldn't marry her, got an imposter to impersonate Burdell, married the imposter, then had Burdell killed, probably by the imposter. Emma then claimed to be Burdell's widow and entitled to his estate. She was tried for his murder, but acquited. Concerned that she still might not get the money, she faked a pregnancy, then arranged to have a baby sneaked into her house, figuring the courts would certainly turn the estate over to a child of Burdell. But one of the doctors that Emma brought into the conspiracy when to the police and Emma was found out. She still wasn't arrested or convicted of any wrongdoing (nobody was), but she was kicked out of the house and got none of the money. The other story involves a ship called the Central America which, in 1857, founded in a storm on the Atlantic and sank. It carried several hundred people coming home from California, along with a large amount of gold from the mines. The women and children were rescued by ships that happened to be in the area. Some of the men were rescued by a third ship that happened along after the sinking. It was a huge story at the time, with the loss of life, relative to the size of the ship, of Titanic proportions. |
| My Rating: | 6 |