The 1930s: Law and Justice: Deaths

THE 1930s: LAW AND JUSTICE: DEATHS

Arthur "Doc" Barker, bank and armored-car robber and founding member of the Barker-Karpis gang, killed while attempting to escape the federal penitentiary on Alcatraz Island, 14 June 1939.

Benjamin N. Cardozo, 68, United States Supreme Court associate justice (1932-1938) and acclaimed legal scholar whose belief that law should be molded to fulfill the needs of a society deeply influenced that Court in the later days of the New Deal era, 9 July 1938.

Clarence Darrow, 80, who, as the "attorney for the damned," was one of the nation's most famous criminal lawyers, defending, among others, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, Eugene V. Debs, J. T. Scopes (the "Monkey Trial"), and the McNamara brothers who were accused of bombing the Los Angeles Times building, 21 March 1938.

Izzy Einstein, 57, Prohibition agent and master of disguises who was personally responsible during his career for the arrest of some forty-nine hundred persons for violation of the Volstead Act, 28 February 1938.

Charles Arthur "Pretty Boy" Floyd, killed in a gun battle with FBI agents on the outskirts of East Liverpool, Ohio, 22 October 1934.

William A. Glasgow, 64, chief counsel for the United Mine Workers of America and adviser to its president, John L, Lewis; became known as the union's advocate against the use of the injunction to suppress strikes by workers in the nation's coal fields, 24 March 1930.

William J. Hickson, 61, psychopathologist and criminologist, who, as founder and director of the Chicago Municipal Court's pathology laboratory, testified as an expert at the Leopold-Loeb murder trial, 4 October 1935.

William Hitz, associate justice of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals (1916-1931) who presided over the oil-reserve scandal trials called the "Teapot Dome" scandal of oilman Harry F. Sinclair and former secretary of the interior Albert B. Fall, 3 July 1935.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, 93, associate justice of the United States Supreme Court (1902-1932), known as the "Great Dissenter" for the minority opinions he wrote in such cases as Lochner v. New York, in which he expressed his belief that government should be given wide discretion to address problems concerning the general welfare, 6 March 1935.

William McAdoo, 76, former congressman and assistant secretary of the navy under Woodrow Wilson, who in the latter part of his career in public service assumed the post of New York City's chief magistrate, instituting much-needed reform in that city's judicial system, 16 June 1930.

Jack "Machine Gun" McGurn (real name, James De Mora), 32, one of Alphonse Capone's most feared gunmen, having been implicated in some twenty-eight gangland killings and believed to be a participant in Chicago's "St. Valentine's Day Massacre," killed by unknown assailants, 13 February 1936,

John George Milburn, 78, counsel for the New York Stock Exchange and defender of the nation's largest trusts (Standard Oil and Union Pacific); when President William McKinley was mortally wounded by an assassin's bullet in 1901, he was taken to the Milburn home where he died a week later, 25 August 1930.

Frank "Jelly" Nash, 49, bank robber, killed by gunmen believed to have been sent to free him from the custody of federal and local police officers, in Kansas City, Missouri, 17 June 1933.

Albert Ottinger, 59, former New York attorney general and the Republican Party's candidate for governor who lost by only twenty-five thousand votes to Franklin D. Roosevelt, 24 January 1938.

Francis Raule, 83, former president (1902-1903) of the American Bar Association and that organization's last surviving founder, 10 February 1930.

Edward T. Sanford, 64, associate justice of the United States Supreme Court (1923-1930), 8 March 1930.

Frederick Steiwer, 55, a former United States senator from Oregon (1926-1938) who gained national recognition as President Roosevelt's chief opponent in his attempt to reorganize the Supreme Court and one of the Court's principal congressional defenders, 3 February 1939.

William Howard Taft, 72, the twenty-seventh president of the United States and former chief justice of the Supreme Court (1921-1930), where he presided as a conservative in his judicial thinking and as an advocate of efficiency in the work of the court, 8 March 1930.

William G. Thompson, 70, attorney and chief counsel for Sacco and Vanzetti from shortly after their arrest in 1922 until their execution in 1927, September 1935.

Ansley Wilcox, 74, the Buffalo, New York, lawyer in whose coat and library Theodore Roosevelt took the oath of office to become the president of the United States following the assassination of President McKinley, 12 September 1935.

Giuseppe Zangara, 33, an unemployed millhand and self-proclaimed anarchist who attempted to kill then-president Franklin D. Roosevelt but did succeed, quite unintentionally, in mortally wounding Chicago mayor Anton Cermak on 15 February 1933, in Miami, Florida, by execution, 6 March 1933.