6. “Old Shakespeare”

Inspector Thomas Byrnes, head of the detective bureau of the New York City police at the end of the 19th century, had no love for mystery. For Inspector Byrnes, solving crimes was a simple matter of applied common sense and diligent police work. In 1888 with London in terror and Scotland Yard baffled by the Whitechapel murders attributed to “Jack the Ripper,” Inspector Byrnes told a reporter that if someone committed such murders in New York, police would have him “in the jug in thirty-six hours.” When Bowery prostitute Carrie Brown was found murdered and mutilated on April 24, 1891, the headlines screamed, “Jack the Ripper has come to America.” And, true to his word, Inspector Byrnes had a man in custody the next day. Never mind that it was the wrong man. Whether or not Jack the Ripper killed Carrie Brown—as some theorists still believe—there is no question that the Ripper influenced the investigation and prosecution of her murder.