Good observation Paul, it's amazing what you will notice if you study pre-war cards, especially Old Judges. Like Jay noted, the card is complete, it wasn't trimmed short by Goodwin & Co. or any of its owners over the last 121 years. Any of the following three scenarios could be responsible for the O'Rourke card (most to least likely - in my opinion):
1) While the 24 card sheet that O'Rourke belonged to was being developed (exposed to sunlight), something, perhaps a neighboring sheet of albumen paper, was placed a bit too close and robbed O'Rourke of a full image. In this case, O'Rourke was probably in the bottom row of the sheet and just got clipped by whatever was placed just below it. While not common, examples of this are out there. I have a Stump Wiedman that is missing a good portion of its left border; Jay has a great example of a missing right border on a McCarthy card which can be seen on page 86 of the book.
2) In 1889 (as well as 1888 Fa & 1890 cards), the matte that was placed over the 24 image matrix did not contain the Old Judge advertising. In quite a few cases, this matte clips a portion of the advertisement, most often the "C" in "CIGARETTE" at the left border or the "." in "FACTORY." at the right but also sometimes clips a portion of the bottom line. There are many examples of this in the book including 12-2, 105-5 (Fa), 200-2, a pair of Nichols, 342-2 & 342-4, 402-3, and 447-4 (had my old notes handy). None of these are missing an entire line, but you can see how easily that could happen.
3) Third scenario being that the advertising line fell off before being photographed as a 24 image sheet. This may be the least likely since I believe this last line resided on same piece of paper as the lines above it making it an all or nothing situation (true for 1889 cards). Although, I suppose the last line could have been accidently cut off from the rest.
Better scans of both cards you presented could help determine most likely root cause. I'm sure I've provided far too much information but this is right up my alley. You need to be careful when you ask OJ questions
