Victorian True Crime Tour in New York City

We’re teaming up with The Mysterious Bookshop! Join Boroughs of the Dead on April 25 as we celebrate Independent Bookstore Day with a very special edition of “Gotham by Gaslight: A Victorian True Crime Tour.”

Step into the shadows of 19th century Gotham, then follow us into the Mysterious Bookshop afterward to browse a curated selection of our favorite NYC-themed historic true crime books.

Discover the dark underbelly of old New York and support one of our favorite independent bookstores, this Saturday!

More About “Gotham by Gaslight”

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 America’s Most Gothic and founder of Boroughs of the Dead.

Tour Dates:
Saturday 4/25/26 and 5/9/26
3:00pm and 12:00pm