… on this date in 1857. Here’s how The New York Times began Darrow’s obituary in 1938:
Clarence Darrow, famous criminal lawyer, recently described as one who thoroughly understood human nature yet loved his fellow-man, died this afternoon at his home here at the age of 80. For two months he had been confined to bed because of heart disease; for two years he had been retired, for many years he had been
trying to retire.
…Mr. Darrow was known internationally as a criminal lawyer. Defender in a hundred or more murder trials, no client of his had ever died on the gallows or electric chair. He had built up a reputation for himself as a friend of labor and of the downtrodden. His oratory and his philosophy made him known to millions.
A kindly, homely personage who dressed in the certainty that clothes do not make the man, he went through life declaring himself an agnostic. But three years ago he declared he no longer had any doubts. He proclaimed himself a materialist whom it had taken fifty years to find out that there is nothing after death.