Florence King died on June 20, 1924, two days before what would have been her 54th birthday.
Florence King died on June 20, 1924, just two days shy of her fifty-fourth birthday. Her death came only a year after her landmark Supreme Court victory in Crown v. Nye, meaning that her career as a pioneering patent attorney reached its zenith in the final years of her life.
By the time of her death, King had amassed a remarkable string of professional firsts: registration before the U.S. Patent Office in 1897, becoming the first woman to argue a patent case before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1922, and becoming the first woman to win such a case in 1923. Her passing in 1924 closed out a career that had spanned nearly three decades at the intersection of law, technology, and gender barriers in the American legal profession.
While detailed accounts of her final years, health, and circumstances of death are not well preserved in the historical record, her death is documented as occurring in 1924, consistent with birth and death years recorded in reference sources on her life. Her legacy as a trailblazing woman in patent law has been revisited by legal historians and organizations dedicated to celebrating women's contributions to intellectual property law, ensuring that her name continues to be recognized more than a century after her most significant achievements.