Howard and Nina Brown are frequent contributors to Murder by Gaslight, on matters pertaining to the 1891 murder of Carrie Brown, viewed by some as the work of London’s Jack the Ripper. The Browns run the website JTRForums.com, discussing all aspects of Jack the Ripper's murders, and CarrieBrown: Murder In The East River Hotel, a discussion site on the Carrie Brown case. They have written three books on Carrie Brown: East Side Story:1891 Murder Case of Carrie Brown, An Illustrated Encyclopedia and A -Z: The1891 Murder Of Carrie Brown In The East River Hotel, and 'Once A Happy Bride' The Tragic Life Of Carrie Brown: From Liverpool To The Lower East Side.
Their latest book, ‘Once a Happy Bride’, available from Amazon, covers aspects of
Carrie's life that have been generally glossed over, beginning with her days as
a young bride of a successful sea captain, and continuing through her days in New York, when she was never able
to shake the ravages of alcohol. Howard and Nina are sharing the foreword of their new book.
'Once A Happy Bride'
The Tragic Life Of Carrie Brown: From Liverpool To The Lower East Side
FOREWORD
Our book is a compilation of the known facts of Carrie Brown's life and not a rehashing of her murder in Room 31 of the East River Hotel in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, back in April 1891.
Three books have already been published that cover the sensational crime that dominated headlines for ten weeks, from April 24, 1891 to the conclusion of the trial of Amer Ben Ali (aka 'Frenchy') on July 3rd, 1891. A murder which received worldwide attention due to the media hype that asked whether Jack The Ripper had arrived in New York. There were similarities between the murder of Carrie and some of the victims of the Whitechapel Murders that required no hype in order to ask that question.
The newspaper media (actually, the only daily form of media in the Gilded Age) brought up a quote (actually a misquote) attributed to Inspector Thomas Byrnes, the man who would be in charge of the NYPD on this case, in which Byrnes allegedly said that if the Ripper came to New York, he'd be arrested within a matter of hours.
The media then, as now, competed for the scoops and stories that sold newspapers, and the Brown Murder was no different. Carrie had entered the East River Hotel on April 23rd with a man who we today know as C.Kniclo (a name written down by the hotel manager in the guest register the following morning after her body was found) and never left alive. She was strangled and mutilated on a cheap, dirty bed on the top floor of the hotel.
Most of what has been published in the contemporary press, beginning in 1891, is loaded with land mines, with many articles published on the same day that conflicted with each other. For those of us who have studied the case for years, it's business as usual. To the newcomer to 19th-century newspapers, you have our sympathies.
It is a fact that newspapers from the 19th Century are riddled with mistakes, a problem that turned 20th Century and early 21st Century case-related research into a mess.
This begins with the nickname she is universally associated with: "Old Shakespeare", a moniker that was given her on April 25th in both the New York Evening World and the Boston Globe. Newspapers referred to her by that nickname even before they had confirmation of her real name.
Early press reports referred to her as old 'Shakespeare' before eventually referring to her as "Old Shakespeare". We'll take a look at her nicknames a bit later on.
Unfortunately, there is an enormous gulf between the years 1861 up to the time she was murdered in regard to biographical material. Material on Carrie
from nearly all of the 1860s and 1870s will be at a minimum in this book. There won't be any 'filler' or our speculations to make up for the scarcity of material, either. What you'll see is what we've got.
Even before the 1860s and 1870s, quite a bit of important information is unavailable.
While we have no baptismal or birth record for her, she was been said to be from Liverpool. Yet, this may be just a long-held speculation since that's the port city from whence she and her parents left England and possibly not the town in which she was actually born.
Since we have no birth certificate, we don't know with absolute certainty her date of birth. One possible method of determining her age may rest in a Church somewhere, but to date none have been located. We do believe that she was born in either 1834 or 1835 and we'll provide the reasons why.
We've tried to present facts and events from her life that explain how she changed from a 'once happy bride', as the Boston Globe referred to her, and which she had been, to 'worthless' as the July 3rd, New York Evening World labeled her, and which she was most definitely not.
There were a lot of women like Carrie Brown during the late 19th century. Intelligent, ambitious, married with a well-respected breadwinner husband, and socially active. Yet, something, perhaps one event or a series of incidents, altered the course of this woman's life to the extent that in her later years she would go into the hallways of buildings of Fourth Ward to sleep at night if she could not obtain money for a night's stay in a hotel or a client to sleep with.
Unlike other murder victims from the Gaslight Era, such as the victims of the Whitechapel Murderer in London, victims who have plaques, grave markers, and frequent visitors, Carrie is buried in an unmarked grave. One day, perhaps that might be addressed.
In lieu of a marker, we hope this book will provide people with better insight into her life and struggles.
Howard Brown & Nina Brown May 2026
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We'd like to thank Jose Oranto and Peter Damgaard for their contributions to this work.
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