The fame of Hiram "Judge" Mendow, who died on May 11th aged 107, rested with his defence of Al Capone in 1929. It was a relatively minor case, and Hiram Mendow declared: "I never needed to get involved with the gangsters, and I never did. I was strictly a criminal defence lawyer." The case involved the Chicago mobster's arrest for carrying a concealed .38 revolver, and Hiram Mendow was not successful. Capone went to prison for a year, but always affectionately referred to his defence counsel afterwards as "the kid".
The case he recalled most fondly was a 1935 murder trial in Minneapolis. During a riot, a native American appeared in a Time photograph wielding a baseball bat over a prone victim on the ground. Hiram Mendow proved his client's innocence with the surprise production in court of the supposedly murdered man - alive and well. Then he sued Time, and won that case, too.
Among his other exploits were writing a book - during the prohibition era - entitled How To Make Wine At Home, coaching baseball and football at a Minneapolis high school, reviewing Yiddish theatre for the city's newspaper, flying vintage planes, writing manuals on family law, developing early housing standards, and taking a course in creative writing at the age of 103. He only stopped smoking in his 70s, never took exercise after giving up athletics at 35, still practised law past his centennial, and enjoyed a glass of wine up to his death.
Minneapolis-born, the son of an immigrant Romanian rag-and-bone man, Hiram Mendow went to work at the age of six, shining shoes and selling newspapers. After obtaining his law degree from the University of Minnesota, and paying his tuition fees by making window shades at night, he helped to fly biplanes with the US army during the first World War.
He then served briefly as a judge - hence his lifelong nickname - but decided he would rather keep defendants out of jail than send them there. He later conducted important anti-trust cases against General Electric and RCA, but his knack of getting publicity stayed with him.
A prominent Minneapolis woman, Cora May White, sued her husband for divorce, claiming that he preferred the radio to sex. Hiram Mendow worked out a compromise in which the husband agreed to stop shouting at his radio when it became difficult to hear - and the couple reconciled amid national headlines.
Hiram Mendow was married for 75 years to Josephine, who died in 1995. When the couple celebrated his 100th birthday, she bridled at suggestions that he might soon be retiring. "Retire?" she demanded. "I always tell people that I married Hiram for better or for worse, but not for lunch."
Christopher Reed Hiram Zaph Mendow: born 1893; died, May 2001