Milestones, May 24, 1937

Divorced. Funnyman Ed Wynn (Israel Edwin Leopold), 50; by Hilda Keenan Wynn, daughter of the late Actor Frank Keenan; in Reno, Nev. She won $300 a week alimony. Funnyman Wynn charged that his wife was an incurable dipsomaniac, intoxicated “95%” of the time when not under direct medical care, for which he had spent $250,000.

Died. Thomas Edmund Knight Jr., 38, Lieutenant-Governor of Alabama; of a kidney ailment; in Montgomery, Ala. Son of the Alabama Supreme Court Justice who withheld the original conviction of the Scottsboro boys, Lieut.-Governor Knight was State prosecutor of the case in subsequent retrials (TIME, April 10, 1933 et seq.).

Died. Percy Lee (“Don’t Call Me Percy”) Gassaway, 51, Oklahoma’s romping onetime (1935-36) “Cowboy Congressman”; of heart disease; in Coalgate, Okla. Celebrated for his ten-gallon hat, shoestring tie and wing collar, “Ol’ Gass” declared that every judge should have at least five years experience at poker before taking office, boosted the Association for the Prevention of Taking Off Hats in Elevators.

Died. Philip Snowden, Viscount Snowden of Ickornshaw, 72, famed longtime British Laborite; of a heart attack; in Tilford, Surrey, England. Son of a poor Yorkshire weaver, he passed the civil service examinations at 22 and was sent as a customs official to the Orkney Islands, where a bicycle accident crippled him for life. He went into politics and became first Socialist Chancellor of the Exchequer (1924, 1929-31). His hard-headed insistence on rigid economy brought the British Government through the early part of the Depression. Philip Snowden was branded a “traitor” to the working class when he and Ramsay MacDonald coalesced with the “National” (Conservative) Government of 1931. He retired from politics next year.

Died. Mrs. Blanche E. MacLeish Billings, 74, wife of Capitalist Cornelius Kingsley Garrison Billings whose death preceded hers by ten days (TIME, May 17); of broncho pneumonia; at “Billings Park,” near Santa Barbara, Calif.

Died. Louis Franklin Swift, 75, onetime President of Swift & Co. (packers), brother of Swift’s present President Gustavus Franklin 2d, Board Chairman Charles Henry, Vice President Harold Higgins and Director George Hastings; after long illness; in Chicago.

Died. John Burke, 78, Chief Justice of the North Dakota Supreme Court, North Dakota’s first Democratic Governor (1907-13), onetime (1913-21) Treasurer of the U. S.; of pneumonia, following a lung operation; in Rochester, Minn. At the 1912 Democratic National Convention he was runner-up to the late Thomas R. Marshall for the Vice Presidential nomination. In 1922 he entered partnership with Louis M. Kardos Jr. in a Wall Street brokerage firm which soon failed, was exposed as a “bucket shop.” Admitting that he had received $500 a week for the use of his name as “window dressing,” “Honest John” Burke surrendered all he had, returned to Fargo penniless at 63.

Died. Major General John Lincoln Clem. 85, U.S.A. retired, “Drummer Boy of Chickamauga”; in San Antonio. Tex. Last Civil War veteran on the active list (until 1916), and youngest U. S. soldier ever to win a sergeant’s chevrons. Orphan John Clem joined the Army by stowing away at 10 in a baggage car bound for a mobilization camp at Covington. Ky. He met the Civil War President in 1864, and decided to take Lincoln for his middle name.

Died. Afonso da Costa, Portugal’s Wartime Premier; in Paris. His life threatened after he helped force the abdication of King Manuel in 1910, he was ousted by a coup d’état in 1917, again exiled in 1926 while he was President of the League of Nations Assembly.