Owen Kildare

Owen Frawley Kildare (June 11, 1864 – February 4, 1911) was an American writer active in the early 20th century. His short stories and novels described the grim realities of life in a New York City slum. Often heard to comment that he was "born in the gutter", he was known as "the Mr. Bounderby of American Letters" and "the Kipling of the Bowery".

Early life

Kildare was born on New York's Lower East Side in 1864. His father, an Irish immigrant, died three months before his birth; his mother, a French immigrant, died soon after his birth. He was raised by a foster family until the age of seven when he began life on his own. He began living his independent life after his foster father drunkenly threw him out of the brothel for daring to ask for a pair of shoes in winter, which his foster mother gave him, despite his father's protests, but he did not comply with the stipulation that from then on he would bring home two buckets of coal instead of one per day after the usual full-day of prowling. He then sold newspapers (as a newsie) on a crew managed by Timothy Sullivan. He could not read or write until he was 30 years old.

Alternate early biography

During Kildare's life, The New York Times suggested that his name was a pseudonym. Then in one of Kildare's obituaries, The Times printed a conversation with "Red" Shaughnessy, a regular at "The Doctor's Bar" in the Bowery, who claimed that Kildare was really Thomas Carroll. According to Shaughnessy, Carroll had been born in Carrollton, Maryland, into a branch of the influential Carroll family. He ran away from home and became a newspaper hawker and fighter, preferring a tough life in the Bowery to that in a comfortable Baltimore suburb. The Literary Digest suggested that the alternate details might be the work of a clever newspaper writer.