Owen Frawley Kildare
| Owen Frawley Kildare | |
|---|---|
Kildare in 1903
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| Born |
June 11, 1864 Manhattan, New York, U.S. |
| Died | February 4, 1911 (aged 46) Manhattan, New York, U.S. |
| Education | Night school at Cooper Union |
| Genre | Zolaesque realism |
| Subject | Life in the Bowery |
| Years active | 1897–1908 |
| Spouse | Leita Russell Bogartus |
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".
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 then sold newspapers on a crew managed by Timothy Sullivan. He could not read or write until he was 30 years old.
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.
Kildare began earning money as a prize fighter, and later he became a bouncer and a bartender in the Bowery. In 1901 he participated in a failed coup to depose Venezuelan dictator Cipriano Castro, and after returning to New York he wrote short stories for magazines and newspapers. He became an associate editor of Pearson's Magazine and later started the short-lived Kildare Publishing Company.
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