Early Life
Cora Ethel Eaton Howarth was born July 12, 1865 in Boston, Massachusetts to John Howarth and Elizabeth Holder. She led a life of refinement, socialized with the well-educated of Boston and gained recognition for her talent in short story writing.
A move to New York City proved to be a series of adventures and misadventures for her. Because unmarried women required chaperons, Cora married her first husband, Thomas Vinton Murphy, who was the son of the former Collector of the Port of New York. They went into business, running munitions and a gambling house. Two years later she married Captain Donald William Stewart, the son of Sir Donald Martin Stewart, 1st Baronet who was the Commander in Chief of India for Queen Victoria. Cora liked England, where she cut a social swath after the fashion of fellow American Jennie Jerome, who had married Lord Randolph Churchill in 1874. However, when Captain Stewart was assigned to India, Cora elected to stay behind as what they called an Empire widow. During their marriage, her husband became the British Resident in the Gold Coast (now Ghana), and was heavily involved in the War of the Golden Stool against the Ashanti. After moving to England to the family estate, Cora quickly became disenchanted with life in the country, and she threw herself into the glamorous swing of London society. Almost immediately she found herself in the middle of a highly publicized affair with the heir of the Chase Bank fortune.
Stewart always hated Cora for not remaining faithful to him in his absence. She made a fool of him after he lowered himself, in the eyes of British society, by making an honest woman of a wayward wife. After sailing into American waters on a private yacht, Cora apparently quarreled with her yachtsman lover and swam ashore in her shift, to start from scratch in Jacksonville, Florida. Calling herself Cora Taylor, she bought the Hotel de Dreme from its proprietor, Ethel Dreme, and remodeled it into a popular "nightclub" called the Hotel de Dream. The elegant establishment was not technically a brothel because, though a man could meet a girl there, they had to go elsewhere to conduct "business".
Read more about this topic: Cora Crane
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