City of Mysteries: Two New True Crime Tours

This November, join Boroughs of the Dead for a stroll into the dark, twisted criminal history of our city as we present two new true crime tours in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

Gotham by Gaslight: A Victorian True Crime Tour takes us to the 19th century, a bloody and violent era when the city seethed with murder, scandal and vice. On this 2-hour walking tour, we’ll examine four true crimes of Antebellum and Gilded Age New York – some of which remain unsolved to this day.

On the very first days of January 1800, the city awoke to news of a fresh murder that was unlike anything they’d ever seen. Over the next hundred years – a time of roiling social and political growth, strain, pressure, and change for New York – each new “murder of the century” gripped the city and whipped it into a panic, aided in no small part by tabloid journalists… and a writer named Edgar Allan Poe. By 1891, we’d even gone so far as to (possibly) have Jack the Ripper on American soil, slashing his way through the waterfront dives of the East Side.

On this walking tour we’ll stroll through the places where it all happened, from Federal Hall to Chatham Square, through City Hall Park, and past the site of the notorious old Five Points. You’ll never see the city the same way again once you’ve seen it by gaslight…

This tour was created and will be led by Andrea Janes, co-author of A Haunted History of Invisible Women, and founder of Boroughs of the Dead.

Tour Dates:
Saturday November 9, 16, and 23
3:00pm – 5:00pm

Sin, Scandal and Blood: In the Shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge takes you to the sinister side of Brooklyn Heights and Dumbo.

Take a walk with Boroughs of the Dead to learn memorable tales of poison, suicide, dismembered corpses, bloodshed, homicide, riots, and scandal. These unsettling stories will lead us on a stroll past striking architecture in Brooklyn’s Historic District and take us down by the waterfront and the Brooklyn Bridge.

These intriguing reports have inspired local literary luminaries such as Truman Capote and Arthur Miller. We’ll also talk about how the waterfront and the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge has allowed for societal transgressions of the sexual, entertaining, and even sinister variety.

This tour was created and will be led by Marie Carter, author of Mortimer and the Witches and senior tour developer for Boroughs of the Dead

Tour Dates:
Sunday November 10, 17, and 24
3:00pm – 5:00pm

These tours are perfect excursions on a foggy late autumn afternoon for anyone who loves mystery, true crime, feminism, Film Noir, horror, Edgar, Allan Poe, New York City history, Truman Captote’s In Cold Blood, or Jack the Ripper studies (particularly The Five).