Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned

by John A. Farrell

  17. Ruby Darrow’s story of her husband’s request comes from a letter to Stone in his papers at the University of California, Berkeley: “He not only could not bear to live without me, but he could not bear to die without me! In confidence when he realized that he had to go, he begged me to devise some manner whereby I could go with him, sweetly saying that if we could go together, then he wouldn’t mind it much. I would have, but that I knew I had to remain to do everything to make his going as comfortable and painless as possible.”

  18. Darrow, Farmington and Story of My Life; Cleveland Plain Dealer, Apr. 18, 1937; Boston Globe, Mar. 17, 1927; Akron Times-Press, Mar. 15, 1938; Kinsman Journal, Sept. 11, 1936; Darrow to James Kennedy, Mar. 21, 1925, Ohio Historical Society; Robert Murphy to Elmer Gertz, Apr. 10, 1957, Elmer Gertz papers, Library of Congress.

  19. University of Michigan, general catalog, 1902; Ann Arbor Courier, Dec. 14, 1877.

  20. In one tale, Darrow said that he missed the bar exam because he and a man he met in the tavern went on an all-night bender. He passed the test, he said, after discovering the next morning that his drinking companion was the bar examiner. In his autobiography, Darrow erroneously says he was living in Ashtabula when he married Jessie Ohl. Stone relates a tale, told by Paul Darrow, alleging that Roberts was a ne’er-do-well who absconded with Darrow’s law books. In fact, Roberts went on to become a respected judge. U.S. Census, 1880; Cleveland Plain Dealer, Jan. 27, 1935, Apr. 18, 1937; Warren Chronicle, Sept. 30, 1924; Democratic Standard, Mar. 12, 1885; Kinsman Journal, Sept. 11, 1936; Boston Globe, Mar. 17, 1927; Charles B. Galbreath, History of Ohio (Chicago: American Historical Society, 1925); Clyde Miller, The Process of Persuasion (New York: Crown, 1946); unidentified newspaper clipping, Kinsman, Ohio, Dec. 1879, ALW.

  21. Darrow address to Society of Medical Jurisprudence, New York Academy of Medicine, Jan. 13, 1931; Jefferson Gazette, Sept. 2, 1881.

  22. Andover Citizen, Apr. 22, 1884; Democratic Standard, June 4, 1886; Painesville Democrat, Aug. 21, 1886; Cincinnati Enquirer, Aug. 19, 1886; Darrow, Story of My Life; Brockway v. Jewell, 52 Ohio 187 (1894); Chicago Tribune, Sept. 3, 1900, Aug. 7, 1899.

  23. Ashtabula Standard, Mar. 5, 1887; Darrow address to Society of Medical Jurisprudence, New York Academy of Medicine, Jan. 13, 1931.

  CHAPTER 2: CHICAGO

  1. According to a March 1938 account in a Rockford, Illinois, newspaper, “for a brief period before he moved to Chicago in 1887, [Darrow] practiced at Harvard, Ill.” In a 1962 letter to Arthur Weinberg, lawyer Floyd Eckert recalled Darrow sitting in an empty office in Harvard, with no business to occupy his time, slowly feeding one stick at a time into a stove to keep warm. At least one of Darrow’s Harvard cases lodged in people’s memory. A hardware store owner, standing guard with a shotgun after two burglaries, shot and captured a youth who was trying to break into the store one night. Darrow defended the boy and won an acquittal by pleading that it was his first offense and that he had been led into crime by his companion. In an interview with Irving Stone, Jessie placed Darrow’s time in Harvard before their marriage. Lincoln Steffens, “Chicago: Half Free and Fighting On,” McClure’s, Oct. 1903.

  2. Chicago Times, Dec. 14, 1894; Donald L. Miller, City of the Century (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996).

  3. The Storey incident won considerable attention when Union loyalists on the police force declined to arrest Eddy, but it should be noted that, on another occasion, Eddy defied a lynch mob and cut the noose from the neck of a “Rebel sympathizer” named Doolittle. The Eddy real estate case dragged on for more than a decade with various disputes about portions of the property. The bulk of the estate ultimately went to his daughter Clara, who, at her death, bequeathed what was left to her Darrow cousins. Chicago Tribune, Mar. 4, 1865, Mar. 16, 1866, Feb. 19, 1874, July 9, 1876, Sept. 21, 1878, Jan. 27, 1878, May 2, 1888, Jan. 21, 1893, Feb. 22, 1896; Chicago Times, May 2, 1888, Jan. 30, Dec. 14, 1894; Besse Louise Pierce, As Others See Chicago (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1933); Jeffrey Adler, First in Violence, Deepest in Dirt (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006); Edward Price Bell, Seventy Years Deep, unpublished autobiography, Bell papers, Newberry Library; George Ade, Single Blessedness and Other Observations (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1922); Ida Tarbell, “How Chicago Is Finding Herself,” American Magazine, Nov. 1908; see Karl Darrow to Darrow, Oct. 23, 1927, and Karl Darrow to Bowen, Dec. 4, 1932, KD; John J. Flinn and John E. Wilkie, History of the Chicago Police (Chicago: Chicago Police Book Fund, 1887); Stead, If Christ Came. Darrow bounced all over town in his early years, renting and buying property, selling to cinch a profit, and rooming in the intervals with his family at 905 Sawyer Avenue and at 3559 Vernon Avenue, 4219 Vincennes Avenue, and 1321 Michigan Avenue.

  4. In his autobiography, Darrow said he arrived in Chicago in 1888, though correspondence and contemporary news accounts clearly place him there in 1887. Darrow to Lloyd, Jan. 4, 1888, HDL; Inter Ocean, Aug. 25, 1887; Chicago Times, Apr. 2, Oct. 7, 1888, Mar. 10, 1889; Chicago Tribune, Apr. 2, Sept. 3, Oct. 5, 10, 11, 20, 1888; untitled Rock Island, Illinois, newspaper clipping, Oct. 29, 1888, OHL; Schilling remarks from Darrow’s sixty-first birthday dinner; Sissman interview with Stone, CD-LOC; Caro Lloyd, Henry Demarest Lloyd (New York: Putnam, 1912).

  5. Paul Avrich, The Haymarket Tragedy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984); Adolph Fischer to Lloyd and Salter, Nov. 4, 1887, HDL; Chicago Tribune, May 5, 1886; Philip Foner, The Autobiographies of the Haymarket Martyrs (New York: Humanities Press, 1969); Harry Barnard, Eagle Forgotten (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1938); Darrow, “Justice to the Anarchists,” Solidarity, Dec. 24, 1887; New York Times, May 6, 1886.

  6. W. P. Black to Lloyd, July 22, 1893, HDL.

  7. Darrow was clear-eyed: he always believed that one of the defendants, Louis Lingg, had made the Haymarket bomb and furnished it to the bomb thrower. Lingg was convicted with the four other condemned anarchists but cheated the executioner by igniting a dynamite cartridge, clenched in his teeth, in his cell on the eve of the hangings. Democratic Standard, Sept. 2, 1887.

  8. “We believe that capital punishment is unnecessary, barbarous and not in keeping with modern civilization; that it tends to cheapen the value placed on life, and to blunt the finer sensibilities of human nature,” the group declared (Chicago Herald, Oct. 14, 1887). Though the author of the resolution is not named, it is reasonable to assume that Darrow wrote it, or played an important role in its adoption, as Jessie Ohl Darrow included the news of it in her scrapbook of his accomplishments. It is an early public expression of his opposition to capital punishment.

  9. Darrow, “Justice to the Anarchist,” Solidarity, Dec. 24, 1887.

  10. Chicago Times, Feb. 20, 21, 1889; Chicago Herald, Feb. 21, Apr. 15, 1889; Chicago Tribune, Feb. 21, Apr. 15, 16, 1889; Darrow, Story of My Life; Sunday Globe, Apr. 21, 1889; Darrow to Lloyd, May 14 and May 20, 1889, HDL; Barnard, Eagle Forgotten.

  11. Clarence Darrow oral history (interview with Agnes Wright Dennis), Illinois Historical Survey, 1918; Altgeld tribute, circa 1903, CD-LOC; Schretter, “I Remember Darrow”; Waldo Browne, Altgeld of Illinois (New York: Huebsch, 1924); Darrow, Story of My Life; Barnard, Eagle Forgotten; New York Times, June 20, 1888; Chicago Times, June 20, 1888, Apr. 2, 1889.

  12. Chicago Tribune, May 2, June 21, 1889; Chicago Daily News, June 20, 1889; Chicago Times, June 21, 1889.

  13. Carter Harrison Jr., Stormy Years (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1935).

  14. Darrow’s allies were back, “booming” him as an independent-minded candidate for Cook County attorney in 1891, but the corrupt county commissioners reached a backroom deal to name a more controllable candidate. Chicago Tribune, Sept. 1, Nov. 14, 1889, Jan. 3, 12, Mar. 21, 22, Apr. 17, 22, May 26, Aug. 24, Sept. 4, 16, 21, Oct. 12, 1890, Jan. 28, 29, Feb. 12, 14, 26, 1891; Chicago Post, Sept. 9, 18, 1890; Chicago Herald, Dec. 25, 1889; Nov. 2, 1890; Chicago Times, Dec. 25, 1889, Jan. 30, Feb. 1, Mar. 22, Apr. 23, May 6, 1890, Jan. 28, 29, Feb. 21, 25, 1891, Dec. 14, 1894; Inter Ocean, Oct. 24,
1890, Jan. 29, 1891; Democratic Standard, Sept. 2, 1887; undated newspaper clipping, OHL; W. B. Conkey, Opinions of the Corporation Counsels and Assistants, January 1872 to March 1897, published by the City Council of Chicago; Lloyd Wendt and Herman Kogan, Lords of the Levee (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1943); Richard Lindberg, Chicago by Gaslight (Chicago: Academy Chicago, 1996); Darrow, “Corruption,” CD-LOC.

  15. Chicago Times, Nov. 19, Dec. 10, 1890, and Jan. 19, 20, 22, 23, Feb. 6, Mar. 12, 1891; Chicago Post, Feb. 5, 1891; Chicago Tribune, Feb. 5, 6, 1891; Chicago Herald, Feb. 3, 4, 6, 7, 1891; Medill letter quoted in Thomas Pegram, Partisans and Progressives (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992).

  16. Paul Darrow and Wilson interviews with Stone, CD-LOC; Jane Addams to Marcet Haldeman-Julius, CD-LOC; Chicago Times, Aug. 10, 1890; Chicago Tribune, May 24, 1890; Oct. 20, 1891, May 30, Dec. 24, 1892; Chicago Herald, April 26, 1891.

  17. Edgar Lee Masters, Across Spoon River (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1936); Darrow, “The State: Its Functions and Duties,” Echoes of the Sunset Club (Chicago: Sunset Club, 1891). Darrow “spoke everywhere, promulgating the socialistic theories of Edward Bellamy, and the crude philosophy of Herbert Spencer, pleading against the conviction of the Anarchists, denying orthodox religion and advocating free trade, the eight hour day and the programme of Henry George,” said the Chicago Journal on July 13, 1893. For examples of Darrow’s radical views on women’s rights, capital punishment, American foreign policy, and other issues during this period, see Sunset Club yearbooks and Chicago Times, Feb. 3, 1889; Chicago Tribune, May 29, 1889, Feb. 4, 28, Apr. 11, 1890, Oct. 14, Nov. 6, 1891, Dec. 30, 1892, Jan. 27, Feb. 23, 1893; Chicago Evening Post, Nov. 7, 1891; the clippings saved in the Jessie Ohl Darrow scrapbook, including the Daily Evening Call, Jan. 24, 1891, the Rockford Register-Gazette, Sept. 8, 1891, the Rockford Morning Star, Sept. 8, 1891, and an untitled Rockford newspaper, Aug. 6, 1889.

  18. Chicago Times, Apr. 2, 3, 1891; Chicago Tribune, Mar. 20, Apr. 4, Apr. 10, Aug. 1, 1891.

  19. Darrow oral history, 1918; Darrow, Altgeld memorial address, Apr. 20, 1902, CD-LOC.

  20. Joseph Gary, “The Chicago Anarchists of 1886; The Crime, the Trial, and the Punishment,” Century Magazine, Apr. 1893. Darrow to Lloyd, Apr. 28, 1893, HDL.

  21. Chicago Tribune, Apr. 30, 1893; Chicago Journal, July 13, 1893.

  22. Darrow to Lloyd, May 17, 1893, Alzina Stevens to Lloyd, May 30 and June 7, 1893, HDL; Chicago Tribune, May 16, 1893; Jessie Darrow interview with Stone, CD-LOC; Adolf Kraus, Reminiscences and Comments (Chicago: Rubovits, 1925); Harrison, Stormy Years; Miller, City of the Century.

  23. Darrow oral history, 1918.

  24. John P. Altgeld, June 26, 1893, “Reasons for Pardoning Fielden, Neebe and Schwab.” The text of the governor’s pardon message was reprinted in pamphlets at the time. It can be found at the Chicago Historical Society’s site: http://www.chicagohs.org/hadc/books/b06/B06.htm.

  25. Darrow, Altgeld tribute; New York Times, June 28, June 29, 1893; see also the Chicago Tribune, June 27, 1893, which said that Altgeld was “not merely an alien by birth, but an alien by temperament and sympathies” with “not a drop of true American blood.”

  26. H. L. Mencken, American Mercury, Oct. 1924.

  27. Schilling to Lloyd, Aug. 1, 1893, HDL; Sunset Club yearbook, 1893.

  28. Chicago Times, Sept. 17, 1893; Chicago Record, Feb. 18, 1897; Altgeld to Harrison, Sept. 13, 1893, Carter Harrison papers, Newberry Library.

  CHAPTER 3: PRENDERGAST

  1. Accounts of Harrison assassination and funeral coverage, Chicago Tribune and Chicago Times, Oct. 29 through Nov. 5, 1893.

  2. Chicago Herald, Nov. 18, 1893.

  3. Accounts of testimony, Prendergast trial, Chicago Times and other papers, November and December, 1893; Chicago Times, Oct. 29, 1893, June 28, 1894.

  4. Chicago Times, Dec. 19, 1893; New York Times, Dec. 30, 1893; Chicago Tribune, May 6, 1894.

  5. Chicago Times, Nov. 5, 1893.

  6. Chicago Daily News, Feb. 14, 1894; Darrow, Story of My Life.

  7. Chicago Tribune, Feb. 17, 20, 1894; Chicago Times, Feb. 18, 1894.

  8. Chicago Evening Post, Feb. 20, 1894; Chicago Daily News, Feb. 24, 1894; Chicago Times, Feb. 25, 1894.

  9. Chicago Times, Mar. 22, 1894; Chicago Daily News, Mar. 22, 1894; Chicago Tribune, Mar. 23, 1894; Trude to Todd, Mar. 2, 1894, Carter Harrison papers, Newberry Library; Brand Whitlock, Forty Years of It (New York: Appleton, 1914).

  10. Chicago Times, Mar. 26, 27, 28, June 17, 1894; Chicago Daily News, Mar. 30, 1894; New York Times, May 22, 1894.

  11. Chicago Times, June 15, 26, 27, 1894; Chicago Daily News, June 26, 1894.

  12. Chicago Daily News, June 26, 1894.

  13. Chicago Times, July 3, 4, 1894; transcript, Darrow closing argument, CD-LOC.

  14. Stone begins his biography with fanciful scenes that place Darrow at the heart of the action of the Debs Rebellion in the first days of July, without any mention of the Prendergast trial, which in fact was consuming Darrow’s time. Elsewhere, Stone mistakenly puts the formation of Darrow’s law firm, the Harrison assassination, and the “Pendergast” trial in 1895, and erroneously states that the mayor was shot at City Hall. Chicago Tribune, July 13, 14, 1894; Chicago Times, July 13, 14, 1894; Chicago Daily News, July 13, 14, 1894.

  15. Medill to Harrison, July 17, 1894, Carter Harrison papers, Newberry Library.

  CHAPTER 4: POPULIST

  1. Chicago Times, Apr. 24, 1894; Gompers quote in New York World, Feb. 1, 1894, quoted in Philip S. Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States, vol. 2 (New York: International, 1955).

  2. Darrow, Story of My Life; Ray Ginger, Altgeld’s America (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1958).

  3. New York Times, Apr. 12, 1893, July 1, 1894; Chicago Times, Jan. 10, 1890, Dec. 10, 11, 1893, Apr. 23, June 2, 1894; Inter Ocean, July 2, 3, 1894; New York Sun, Oct. 11, 1885, and Chicago Tribune, Sept. 21, 1888, quoted in Almont Lindsey, The Pullman Strike (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1942); Richard Ely, “Pullman: A Social Study,” Harper’s Magazine, February 1885; U.S. Strike Commission, Report on the Chicago Strike (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1895).

  4. Cleveland veto message, Feb. 16, 1887. See Allan Nevins, Grover Cleveland (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1932).

  5. Milchrist to Olney, June 30, 1894, Records of the Department of Justice, National Archives; Richard Olney to C. E. Perkins, Dec. 28, 1892, Olney papers, Library of Congress; see Matthew Josephson, The Politicos (New York: Harcout, Brace & World, 1938) and Gerald G. Eggert, Richard Olney: Evolution of a Statesman (State College, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1974).

  6. U.S. Strike Commission, Report; I used newspaper coverage of the strike between July 1 and July 13, 1894, from the Chicago Times, Inter Ocean, Chicago Tribune, New York Times, and Chicago Daily News; Pullman strike records in Records of the Department of Justice, National Archives, see especially Walker to Olney, July 2, 3, 6, 14, 20, 1894, and related correspondence in the Appendix to the Annual Report of the Attorney General of the United States for the Year 1896 (Washington, 1896); McAlister Coleman, Eugene Debs: A Man Unafraid (New York: Greenberg, 1930).

  7. With everything else he had to do in this chaotic summer, Darrow still made the time to take Brockway v. Jewell to the Ohio Supreme Court—and won. Eugene Debs to Caro Lloyd, Jan. 31, 1905, Florence Kelley to Henry Lloyd, July 18, 1894, HDL; Arthur Garfield Hays, Democracy Works (New York: Random House, 1939); Masters, Across Spoon River; Jane Addams, “A Modern Lear,” Survey, Nov. 2, 1912; Darrow, Story of My Life.

  8. Chicago Times, Sept. 27, 1894; Chicago Tribune, Sept. 27, Dec. 15, 1894; Milwaukee Sentinel, Sept. 27, 1894; Denver Post, Dec. 19, 1894; Inter Ocean, Dec. 15, 1894; New York Times, Dec. 15, 1894.

  9. Chicago Tribune, Jan. 13, 15, 17, 30, Feb. 7, 1895; Chicago Times, Jan. 13, 14, 15, 27, 29, 1895; Inter Ocean, May 31, 1894, Jan. 27, 30, Feb. 6, 7, 8, 18, 1895; New York Times, Jan. 17, 1895; Denver Post, Jan. 26, 1895; Milwaukee Journal, Feb. 13, 1895; Theodore Roosevelt
to White, Nov. 30, 1908, Theodore Roosevelt papers, Library of Congress; Theodore Debs to L.W. Rogers, Jan. 12, 1944, Bernard Brommel and Eugene Debs papers, Newberry Library.

  10. Chicago Tribune, Mar. 26, 27, May 28, 1895; Chicago Times, Mar. 26, 27, 1895; New York Times, Mar. 26, 27, May 28, 1895; Edwin Walker to Olney, Apr. 27, May 21, 1895; and U.S. attorney John C. Black to Judson Harmon, Feb. 28, 1896, U.S. Department of Justice records, National Archives.

  11. Lindsey, The Pullman Strike; Barnard, Eagle Forgotten; Waldo R. Browne, Altgeld of Illinois (New York: B.W. Huebsch, 1924).

  12. Barnard, Eagle Forgotten.

  13. Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform (New York: Vintage, 1955); Chicago Times, Feb. 4, 1895; Willis J. Abbott, “The Chicago Populist Campaign,” The Arena, Feb. 1895.

  14. Keeping the other guys from stealing the election was an essential ingredient for victory in Chicago. Darrow defended one Democratic faction that turned off the lights, boarded up the windows, and built a wooden barricade across the door to a polling place so that the voters had to stand on tiptoe to hand their paper ballots to the armed poll workers inside. It was necessary, Darrow contended, in order to keep the ballot boxes from being carried off by the other side. But voters were advised to remove any rings before voting, lest they disappear into the dark with the ballot. Chicago Tribune, Aug. 8, Oct. 7, 20, 23, 31, 1894, Mar. 17, 1895; Chicago Times, Sept. 22, 30, Oct. 7, 20, 25, Nov. 4, 1894, Feb. 4, 1895; Searchlight, Oct. 25, 1894.

  15. Chicago Times, Nov. 8, 1894; Darrow to Lloyd, Nov. 22, 1894, Apr. 23, 1896, Lloyd to Darrow, Nov. 23, 1894, Darrow to Caro Lloyd, Nov. 9, 1905, HDL.

  16. Darrow, Altgeld memorial address, Apr. 20, 1902; Chicago Tribune, Feb. 23, Apr. 19, 24, 25, Nov. 14, 1895, Jan. 5, Sept. 16, 17, Nov. 10, 1896; Chicago Record, Dec. 25, 1895; Chicago Times Herald, Feb. 23, Mar. 16, Apr. 24, 28, June 3, 25, 1895; New York Times, June 7, 1895, July 1, 2, 4, 7, 8, 11, 26, 1896. Barnard, Eagle Forgotten; William Allen White, Autobiography; Edgar Lee Masters, The New Star Chamber and Other Essays (Chicago: Hammersmark, 1904).