Carnaby & Barnaby Warwick — The Brothers Who Made Their Own Rules
Carnaby and Barnaby Warwick were born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1905, the only sons of a hardworking young couple who had come north from South Carolina seeking opportunity and a better life. Their parents had little in the way of wealth, but what they possessed they poured into their boys. Education, discipline, good clothes when they could afford them, and above all music were considered investments in their sons' futures.
The twin brothers showed remarkable musical ability almost from childhood. Barnaby became an accomplished horn player while Carnaby developed a gift for the piano, though both could comfortably trade instruments when the occasion demanded. By their late teens they were polished enough to play dances, private parties, church socials and local gatherings around Newark. Their parents imagined music would help carry them toward respectable professions and, eventually, toward the dream both brothers openly shared: to own businesses of their own and become prominent men in their community.
There was, however, something about the Warwick boys that even their parents taught them never to discuss outside the family.
Carnaby and Barnaby had been born Shifters.
Their supernatural nature had manifested while they were still young, and they quickly learned the importance of secrecy. In an America where even their human identity placed obstacles before ambitious Black men, revealing that they were something other than human could have been ruinous—or fatal. Their parents impressed upon them that shifting was something to be practiced privately and spoken of only among those they trusted absolutely.
For decades, the brothers guarded the secret extraordinarily well.
New York Changes Everything
One year into college, the brothers made a trip to New York City that altered the course of their lives.
They went initially for the music.
The exploding jazz scene was everything they had imagined and more: crowded clubs, musicians improvising until morning, singers arriving from Chicago, New Orleans and Kansas City, wealthy patrons rubbing shoulders with working people, and Black performers commanding rooms in ways the young Warwicks had seldom witnessed.
But Prohibition had created another world immediately beneath it.
Behind unmarked doors, through kitchens and down basement staircases were speakeasies where liquor flowed freely and gambling tables operated until sunrise. Money moved everywhere. Politicians, police officers, businessmen, entertainers and criminals could sometimes be found drinking at neighboring tables.
The brothers quickly understood an uncomfortable truth: the respectable businessmen who appeared to own some establishments were not necessarily the men actually making the money.
Their introduction to the criminal underworld eventually brought them into the orbit of Newark bootlegger Abram “Lefty” Zilberman, whose organization profited enormously from Prohibition. The Warwick brothers were intelligent, personable, ambitious and capable of moving comfortably between very different social worlds. They could talk music with performers, business with club owners and money with gamblers.
They began working as scouts and intermediaries, helping identify opportunities for expanding gambling and liquor operations beyond Newark and New York.
It was supposed to be temporary.
Easy money has a way of changing plans.
Gravesbury Park
The brothers eventually turned their attention south toward the Jersey coast and the increasingly notorious resort town of Gravesbury Park.
What they discovered astonished them.
Gravesbury had never possessed much enthusiasm for outsiders telling it what to do. Local authorities enforced Prohibition unevenly at best, particularly when the establishments involved were bringing tourists and money into town. Certain police officers could be persuaded to look the other way, while others seemed almost philosophically opposed to federal interference.
Carnaby and Barnaby recognized an opportunity almost immediately.
They relocated to Gravesbury Park and established an illegal speakeasy, initially operating with the expectation that it would become another profitable outpost in Zilberman's network. Liquor came in, betting followed, and money began accumulating faster than either brother had expected.
But the Warwicks added something the mob hadn't anticipated.
They made the place theirs.
Drawing upon their musical connections, Carnaby and Barnaby began bringing Black jazz musicians and entertainers from across the United States to Gravesbury Park. Performers who might have found themselves relegated to service entrances or barred altogether from fashionable establishments elsewhere on the Jersey Shore were given a stage, an audience and—when the Warwicks had anything to say about it—proper payment.
The brothers occasionally joined the musicians themselves. Older Gravesbury residents would later claim that some of the wildest nights were those when Barnaby picked up his horn and Carnaby sat down at the piano after midnight.
The speakeasy became more than a drinking establishment. It became a destination.
And the Warwicks became rich.
The Mob Comes Calling
Success created a problem.
The brothers had originally arrived as soldiers and representatives of someone else's organization. Increasingly, however, they behaved like independent operators.
Carnaby and Barnaby controlled liquor, bookmaking and gambling in an increasingly lucrative resort town, and they had little intention of surrendering a percentage forever to crime families sitting in Newark or New York.
Ordinarily, such independence would have resulted in a very short career.
But Gravesbury Park was not an ordinary town.
The brothers had gradually become acquainted with another underground operating beneath the resort—one considerably older than organized crime.
The witches.
Gravesbury's covens had spent generations concealing themselves from the human population, and the Warwicks possessed something that immediately distinguished them from most outsiders: they already knew the supernatural existed because they were supernatural themselves.
An unlikely alliance developed.
The witches wanted outside criminal organizations kept from gaining control of Gravesbury. The Warwicks wanted exactly the same thing.
So Carnaby and Barnaby quietly enlisted magical assistance.
Mob representatives arriving to intimidate them encountered inexplicable difficulties. Meetings were forgotten. Automobiles refused to start. Account books disappeared. Men became hopelessly lost on roads they had traveled dozens of times. Others reportedly fled Gravesbury after experiencing things they steadfastly refused to describe although reports later told of an incredible shootout when Lefty's men opened fire on eachother’s Hudsons in a case of misidentification. A couple of the demised baffled henchmen can still be spotted on Ocean Avenue from time to time and mysterious gunshots heard in the night.
Whether every story was true hardly mattered.
The message was understood.
Gravesbury Park belonged to Gravesbury Park.
The brothers had effectively transformed themselves from mob soldiers into independent operators, ruthlessly protecting their territory through a combination of money, political connections, intimidation and supernatural alliances.
The Warwick
When Prohibition ended in 1933, Carnaby and Barnaby were prepared.
Rather than disappearing with the speakeasy era, they legitimized much of their operation and eventually opened The Warwick on Ocean Avenue, which grew into Gravesbury Park's premier jazz club and one of the most fashionable nightlife establishments on the Jersey coast.
Behind the polished doors, however, gambling continued.
The brothers had finally achieved the dream their parents had encouraged when they were boys: they were successful businessmen, property owners and respected figures within their community.
They had simply taken a considerably more complicated road getting there.
Their criminal reputation remained an open secret, but Gravesbury Park had its own definition of respectability. The Warwicks employed locals, paid musicians well, brought visitors into town and—most importantly—kept outside crime families from establishing a serious foothold.
For many residents, that counted for considerably more than legality.
1950 — The Secret Comes Out
For forty-five years, Carnaby and Barnaby Warwick successfully concealed the fact that they were Shifters.
Then, in 1950, Gravesbury Park officially acknowledged the existence of its supernatural population.
Witches, Fae, Shifters, ghosts and other beings who had existed quietly alongside the human population were suddenly no longer merely subjects of rumor.
The Warwick brothers finally revealed publicly what only family, trusted associates and certain members of the supernatural community had known.
They had been born Shifters.
For some residents, the revelation explained a great deal: their uncanny ability to survive dangerous encounters, the strange loyalty they commanded, their longstanding relationship with Gravesbury Park's witches and perhaps even a few old stories concerning large unidentified animals occasionally seen prowling near the Warwick after closing time.
For Carnaby and Barnaby, however, coming out as Shifters represented something more personal.
They had spent the first half of their lives hiding an essential part of themselves in order to survive and prosper. Gravesbury became the first place where they could be successful businessmen, musicians, former criminals, Black men and Shifters without pretending that any one part of them did not exist.
By then, the Warwick brothers were no longer outsiders who had come to exploit a permissive resort town.
They were part of its establishment.
Their combination of ambition, music, vice, strategic alliances and fierce territorial independence helped establish a principle that would define Gravesbury Park for generations:
Outsiders were welcome to visit. They were welcome to spend their money. But nobody—not politicians, developers, crime families, or anyone else—was going to own Gravesbury Park except the people and creatures who called it home.