Darrow's Nightmare

The Forgotten Story of America's Most Famous Trial Lawyer (Los Angeles 1911–1913)

Nelson Johnson

• Editorial: RosettaBooks
• Año: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780795353017
• Categoría: Jura
• Categoría: Juristische Biographien

"A fascinating portrait of Clarence Darrow as we've never seen him before" from the author of the bestselling book and hit HBO series Boardwalk Empire (Terence Winter, creator & executive producer, Boardwalk Empire ). Clarence Darrow is the most celebrated criminal trial lawyer in American history. In the Spring of 1911, organized labor implored Darrow to represent the McNamara brothers, two union iron workers charged with the murder of twenty employees arising out of the bombing of the Los Angeles Times building. Darrow and his wife Ruby's trip west quickly became a fight for survival. After Darrow negotiated a plea bargain for the McNamaras with the help of the brilliant journalist Lincoln Steffens, Darrow was indicted for attempted bribery of a juror. But for the representation of a charismatic, flamboyant, and troubled genius, California criminal attorney Earl Rogers, Darrow's career might have ended that year in Los Angeles. The two trials were front-page national news in their day, and then lost to history. Nelson Johnson has brought this two-year episode to life with a cast of memorable characters based upon his study of the 8, 500-plus page trial transcript plus many published and unpublished sources (including Ruby's letters to Darrow's biographer Irving Stone). Darrow's Nightmare is a true story unlike any other—a historical courtroom thriller brought to life.

Chapter 1

At Home, Chicago

Upon return to Chicago in January 1908, Clarence’s priority was his law practice—namely, earning an income. Yet he had little fire in his belly for the law. He was morose, physically drained, and still yearned to be a writer. He fantasized about editing a magazine, writing books, and speaking before adoring crowds. Darrow saw himself as a watchman whose task was to expose the misdeeds of the powerful, someone to shine a light into the dark corners of American society. In short, Darrow wanted “to become a writer and a philosopher whose books and articles would transform world politics and Western culture.”1 He once confided to his law partner, Francis Wilson, “The one thing I want most of all, is to be a writer.”2 He hoped to change society through his pen. The legal profession no longer excited him.

Nevertheless, within days of his arrival, still bent, battered, and bandaged, Darrow had no choice but to return to his law practice. The fees from the Idaho trials had been spent on medical bills, and his investment in Black Mountain was gone. What’s more, he and Ruby needed a place to live. That was Ruby’s top priority.

What they both knew was that Chicago was home. They weren’t looking to any of the stylish suburbs that were emerging at the time. They needed to be in the city. Despite its raucous nature, Chicago was where they sought sanctuary after each of the road trips on which Clarence waged his many battles.

No city in US history better illustrates our nation’s coming of age as an industrial force than does Chicago. Showing capitalism at its best and worst, the city “took resources and raw materials from everywhere and converted them into money at an unprecedented rate. Hogs and steers, coal and iron, were transmuted into multifarious products by new and ruthless means.”3 Flaunting its brute strength, marvelous technical achievements, and huge disparities, no other American city had grown at such a furious pace as had Chicago, or with such bewildering social inequities. Prior to the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, Chicago had been a tiny Native American village on an enormous lake frequently visited by French missionaries. But the completion of the canal let loose torrents of trade, coursing west and east, and, most important, it brought settlers. During the fifty years between 1840 and 1890, Chicago’s population mushroomed from fewer than five thousand residents to more than one million. For many, Chicago was the city of the future, yet its experience as a rising industrial power liberated some people and enslaved others. Opportunities to excel or fail on a grand scale abounded. The Windy City was a beguiling metropolis—animated, nourishing, and exciting, yet equally dangerous, heartless, and unforgiving. It was Chicago’s dynamism that had attracted both Clarence and Ruby from different places.

Although popular lore holds that it was a book on criminology by a local politician that attracted Darrow to Chicago, it’s more likely that he was introduced to the city through the letters of his brother Everett. Having moved there several years earlier, Everett was employed as a schoolteacher in the city’s growing public school system. He was fascinated by Chicago, and his vivid descriptions ignited Darrow’s enthusiasm to reinvent himself in a bustling city on the rise. Chicago was the most exciting place he had ever heard of, and with his law practice in Ohio on its way to monotony, Darrow set out for Chicago at age thirty, arriving in 1887. A short time later, he was joined by his then wife, Jessie. Yet Chicago was no place for Jessie, and less than a decade later they were divorced. Jessie returned to Ohio with their only child, Paul.

Ruby Hamerstrom was the eldest child, and only sister of six brothers, in a prosperous Swedish family. Her mother was an invalid, and biographers have speculated that Ruby had grown weary of being the second mother to so many young boys. Although she was forced to leave school at age fourteen to care for her mother and manage the household, she was ambitious and made time to visit the library at Knox College, located in her hometown of Galesburg, Illinois. Apparently planning for the future, and her escape from home, Ruby read everything she could find on the craft of writing, hoping to become a journalist. At age eighteen (1891), “with two long braids of auburn hair dangling down her back,”4 the strongly independent Ruby decided she was done looking after her brothers and left her family, traveling two hundred miles north to Chicago.

Her first job was as the bookkeeper for a physician. In her spare time, she began writing news stories on women, and eventually one was published by the Chicago Evening Post, which featured a column “Woman and Her Ways.” With a keen mind and sharp skills as a writer, Ruby was offered a position with the newspaper and was on her way as a journalist. It was an era in which no formal education was needed to become a news reporter. The traits required were a nimble mind, an alert ear, and fluid but unadorned writing. Ruby possessed all three and wrote under the pen name of Ruby Stanleigh.

One of the families that Ruby befriended in Chicago was that of John Gregg and his wife, Maida. Gregg was the creator of the shorthand system and had gained wealth and fame educating people in his techniques. He was also an excellent public speaker, and he and Darrow shared the stage frequently at various events in Chicago. The Greggs had asked Ruby to join them for a lecture one evening in the spring of 1899 at the White City Club of Chicago. Taking its name from the World’s Fair of 1893, the club was a society of progressive thinkers.

Darrow was delivering one of his occasional lectures on the Persian poet Omar Khayyam, which was soon to be published in his first book, A Persian Pearl. He couldn’t help but notice a young woman in the audience. With “auburn-colored hair, a pink-and-white complexion, wearing a wine-colored jacket trimmed with baby lamb and a pert hat to match,”5 the twenty-six-year-old Ruby was always dressed beautifully and turned heads everywhere she went. Understated yet elegant, she had style.

Darrow was bursting to meet her and asked the Greggs to make introductions following his talk. The attraction was immediate. Despite his brilliant mind and eloquent speech, forty-two-year-old Darrow had the look of a tall, quiet farm boy with blue eyes, skin like leather, and hair like straw, with little regard for his appearance. Darrow was drawn to Ruby’s youth, vivaciousness, and striking good looks. She was charmed by his easy manner and status as Chicago’s best-known lawyer.

Ruby knew he was divorced. Darrow didn’t know that she was engaged to a stockbroker in New York. He came on to her quickly, asking for a dinner date. Though she was mesmerized at first meeting him, Ruby was at a loss as to how to handle the advances of a famous man sixteen years her senior. She refused his offer. As the weeks went by, Darrow composed several letters to Ruby, delivered by Maida Gregg, without a reply. Yet Darrow persisted, much as he might with a difficult witness. Finally, after obtaining her fiancé’s permission, and in hope of putting an end to Darrow’s messages, she agreed to meet him for dinner, conditioned on Maida Gregg accompanying her. In a short time, they were dining alone, and Ruby’s engagement with the stockbroker was broken off.

It would be four years before they married, and during their extended courtship, Ruby came to understand the appeal that Clarence had for many women: “He seemed to be all sorts and all ages, from the boy that he never outgrew to the old man that he never became…even to those who met him but momentarily, there was something boyish in the shrug of the shoulders and toss of head and shyness of manner and speech.”6 It’s also likely that Ruby glimpsed what she was getting herself into by marrying a larger-than-life public figure. Yet she knew that she loved him completely and was prepared, without qualification, to commit her life to his happiness in their marriage, and to his success as a lawyer.

Darrow, too, was smitten by his “Rube” or “My Dear Old Reuben,” and during their courtship, while out of town on one of his many road trips, he wrote to her frequently—sometimes twice a day. In one letter he yearned for her: “I want you to know that I love you more than I have ever loved anyone in life—that you have been kinder truer & nobler to me than anyone else has ever been, that I can never be happy without you…I cannot think of living without you…. Much as I loved you at first it has grown every day & you are almost me.”7 In another letter he told her, “It seems an age since I have seen you & you don’t know how I want you—how I want you every day & night & all night. I am really getting batty on the subject…I’m really counting the days until we are together.”8

Some of Darrow’s letters made clear that regardless of how much he hungered for Ruby, marriage was a stumbling block. After his divorce, Darrow lived a carefree life on the West Side of Chicago near Hull House, a settlement house founded by progressive leader Jane Addams. Settlement houses, a phenomenon of the Progressive Era, were established in poor urban areas at the turn of the twentieth century. They were managed by social workers, frequently young, educated women, whose goal was to uplift the condition of the working poor, mostly immigrants.

In the absence of the constraints of monogamy, Darrow enjoyed bachelorhood and dated and slept with many of the young Hull House social workers. There were a fair number of young, well-educated, sexually liberated women in the audiences to whom he spoke, whether on social justice or literature, and they were quickly enamored with this famous man. Some went to bed with him before the night was over.

Ruby was different. Though there is little doubt it was love at first sight for both of them, she wasn’t so quick to go to bed with Clarence. It became clear early on that marriage mattered to her, and that without it, she would end their relationship. He told her, “Darling I do think about loving you, about your giving me up & going to someone who can give you more certainty and peace—and my heart almost stands still when I think of it, for I love you so fondly.”9

Gradually, over the many months of their relationship, Clarence accepted marriage as the solution to the pain of their separation, and finally, more than three years into their relationship, and shortly before their wedding, he wrote to her: “I want you as much as ever & now it is only a little more than two weeks away & I don’t seem to shudder MUCH [thinking of marriage] and am not figuring on putting it off or anything & am coming right up to the scratch. Any how you dear old girl I love you & everything is all right so far & will be further.”10

On July 16, 1903, a private ceremony in the home of John and Maida Gregg was performed by Judge Edward Dunne, a friend of Darrow, later mayor of Chicago and governor of Illinois. Ruby and Clarence exchanged vows in the presence of Ruby’s brother Fred and Darrow’s law partner Francis Wilson, who had quietly secured the couple’s marriage license. When news of the wedding made its way around Chicago, many of Darrow’s friends were stunned. They couldn’t believe that the self-professed bachelor for life who had preached for free love against matrimony would choose to wed. Following a quick champagne brunch, the newlyweds were off by train to Montreal, where they boarded the Bavarian, an ocean liner headed to Europe.

Neither of them knew that Darrow wasn’t seaworthy, and he suffered “spell after spell of seasickness, which kept him in his berth most of the time”11 on the cruise across the Atlantic. Ruby made the best of things by reading aloud to him from a history of France. Traveling through Europe for two and a half months, they hobnobbed with a network of international socialists, intellectuals, and literary figures who knew of Darrow through his fearless representation of the labor movement. Making use of every waking hour on their honeymoon, Clarence completed a book he had been writing entitled Farmington, a fictionalized account of his years growing up in Ohio. The novel is a slice of mid-nineteenth-century Americana, akin to Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer. As one of Darrow’s biographers has described it, “The story is told with incisive, delicious humor, with a keen but tolerant eye for the foibles of humanity.”12 Though narrated with a subtle wit, a deep pessimism runs throughout the book. Eventually, Farmington sold well, as Ruby expected it would. The couple returned to Chicago ten weeks later, in early October.

Although Ruby had been making her own way in the world for twelve years as a news reporter, she decided to end her career when they married. Ruby was now Mrs. Darrow, and for the remainder of her days, that was how she wished to be known; no longer Ruby, instead, simply Mrs. Darrow. Her new role demanded much more than that of a wife and homemaker. The bromide that ...