In time, a failed business and the Great Depression of the late 1920s and early 1930s wiped out his savings. By February 1923, according to one source, Attell was short on funds, blind, and residing at the Alameda County Hospital. While blind, he was forced at one point to sell peanuts and cigarettes at fights to raise money, while a young man led him to his customers. Hearing of his plight, Jack Dempsey later financed a cigar stand in San Francisco that supplied Attell a decent living for many years. He was married to wife Mary, formerly Mary Forman, but had no children of their own. In 1957, he suffered a heart attack and retired to Palo Alto for a period. After his passing in 1960 at his home on South Court in Palo Alto, he was interred in Cypress Lawn Memorial Park in the San Francisco suburb, Colma, California, the city in which he had first taken his World Bantamweight title.