Owen Frawley 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. The Literary Digest suggested that the alternate details might be the work of a clever newspaper writer.

Later life Kildare began earning money as a prize fighter, and later he became a bouncer and a bartender in the Bowery. a writer who helped him edit and publish some of his work. He later married Bogartus. From the time of his hospitalization in 1908 until his death, he would not leave the psychiatric hospital system. He died after a seizure in 1911 at the Manhattan Psychiatric Center.

Major works My Mamie Rose (Baker and Taylor Co., 1903) The Good of the Wicked (Baker and Taylor Co., 1904) The Wisdom of the simple (Fleming H. Revell Co., 1905) My Old Bailiwick (Grosset and Dunlap Co., 1906)

Film My Mamie Rose was adapted by Raoul Walsh for the silent film Regeneration in 1915.