Henry Clay McPike (1857-1943): Bay Area Attorney Involved in Headline-Grabbing Legal Cases

HC McPike Crypt in Miller Mausoleum & Photo

Miller Family Mausoleum 

Henry Clay (“H. C.”) McPike was a Bay Area trial and appellate lawyer whose long career bridged the San Francisco and Oakland legal communities and touched some of the most storied courtrooms of his time. Born in San Jose on July 25, 1857, McPike read law in California and was admitted to the state bar in 1879. Over the decades that followed he became known for his steady command of complex litigation and for his occasional proximity to cases that captured national headlines.

McPike’s early prominence grew from his participation on the legal team in In re Neagle (1890), the landmark habeas corpus case that arose from the Lathrop-station shooting in which a U.S. marshal defended Supreme Court Justice Stephen J. Field. The case established enduring precedent for federal-officer immunity, and McPike’s inclusion among counsel positioned him within one of the defining tests of federal authority in the post-Civil-War era.

Lily Langtry biography

By the mid-1890s, McPike’s name surfaced again in a swirl of celebrity and property litigation. He assisted the famed British-born actress Lily Langtry during her California legal efforts to secure a divorce from her estranged husband, Edward Langtry, and to protect her ranch holdings in Lake County. McPike helped assemble depositions and filings to demonstrate desertion and was part of the California legal team working in concert with Langtry’s advisors abroad. His deft handling of that delicate, high-society matter showed a lawyer comfortable at the intersection of publicity and the finer points of property law.

Book about Stanford White Case

McPike also occupied a small but noteworthy seat in what newspapers quickly christened the “Trial of the Century.” When architect Stanford White was shot and killed in 1906 by millionaire Harry K. Thaw, San Francisco attorney Delphin Delmas led Thaw’s defense. McPike was among the colleagues who joined Delmas on the defense bench during the 1907 proceedings in New York. Although Delmas’s eloquent closing arguments drew the national spotlight, McPike contributed to the behind-the-scenes coordination of witnesses and legal briefs—a steady West Coast hand supporting a trial that riveted the nation and blended law, celebrity, and scandal like no case before it.

In 1906 McPike sought to translate his legal reputation into political influence, running as the Democratic nominee for the U.S. House of Representatives from San Francisco. He lost to Republican Victor Metcalf—soon to join Theodore Roosevelt’s cabinet—but the campaign reflected McPike’s continuing engagement with public life and his belief that lawyers could and should shape civic policy.

Cartoon Parody of Henry C McPike

Through the 1910s and 1920s McPike maintained an active Bay Area practice encompassing civil, commercial, and municipal litigation. Appellate records document his involvement in finance and contract disputes argued before the California Supreme Court. By the mid-1930s he had moved his principal offices to Oakland, where court filings identify him as “of Oakland,” signaling his full integration into the East Bay’s growing legal and business scene.

Henry Clay McPike’s career spanned more than half a century of California’s legal history—from the post-Gold Rush assertion of federal authority, through the Gilded Age of theatrical scandals, to the Depression-era courts of an industrializing Bay Area. He embodied a generation of California lawyers whose reputations were built on craft, adaptability, and discretion—attorneys who could argue constitutional law one year and guide a celebrity through personal turmoil the next. McPike died in 1943, remembered in the legal notices of the day as a respected member of the bar and one of the last surviving links to the formative decades of the state’s legal profession.

Sources (one line): Find A Grave memorial; In re Neagle case records (Supreme Court Historical Society); Historical Society of the New York Courts retrospective on the Thaw trial; California Supreme Court decision Central National Bank of Oakland v. Bell (1936); Lake County archival records on Lily Langtry litigation; 1906 Congressional Directory; Oakland Tribune