| James Michael Curley | |
|---|---|
| 53rd Governor of Massachusetts | |
| In office January 3, 1935 – January 7, 1937 |
|
| Lieutenant | Joseph L. Hurley |
| Preceded by | Joseph B. Ely |
| Succeeded by | Charles F. Hurley |
| Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts's 10th district |
|
| In office March 4, 1911 – March 3, 1913 |
|
| Preceded by | Joseph F. O'Connell |
| Succeeded by | William Francis Murray |
| Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts's 12th district |
|
| In office March 4, 1913 – February 4, 1914 |
|
| Preceded by | John W. Weeks |
| Succeeded by | James A. Gallivan |
| Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts's 11th district |
|
| In office January 3, 1943 – January 3, 1947 |
|
| Preceded by | Thomas A. Flaherty |
| Succeeded by | John F. Kennedy |
| 41st Mayor of Boston | |
| In office 1914–1918 |
|
| Preceded by | John F. Fitzgerald |
| Succeeded by | Andrew James Peters |
| 43rd Mayor of Boston | |
| In office 1922–1926 |
|
| Preceded by | Andrew James Peters |
| Succeeded by | Malcolm Nichols |
| Majority | 2,315[1] |
| 45th Mayor of Boston | |
| In office 1930–1934 |
|
| Preceded by | Malcolm Nichols |
| Succeeded by | Frederick Mansfield |
| 48th Mayor of Boston | |
| In office 1946–1950 |
|
| Preceded by | John E. Kerrigan |
| Succeeded by | John Hynes |
| Personal details | |
| Born | November 20, 1874 Boston, Massachusetts |
| Died | November 12, 1958 (aged 83) Boston, Massachusetts |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Spouse(s) | Mary Curley Gertrude Curley |
| Religion | Roman Catholic[2] |
James Michael Curley (November 20, 1874 – November 12, 1958) was an American politician famous for his four terms as mayor of Boston, Massachusetts. He also served twice in the United States House of Representatives and one term as 53rd Governor of Massachusetts.
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Curley's father, Michael Curley, left Oughterard,[3] County Galway, Ireland at age 14. He settled in Roxbury, an Irish immigrant neighborhood in Boston, where he met Sarah Clancy, also from Co. Galway. They married, and in 1874, their second son, James Michael Curley, was born.[4]
Curley's father died when the boy was just 10 years old, leaving his mother a young widow forced to support her children on her own.[5] His mother got a job scrubbing floors in offices and churches all over Boston.[6] It was back-breaking work and his mother's struggle influenced Curley's attitude toward the poor for the rest of his life. James had two brothers: John J. (1872-1944) and Michael (born 1879), who died at 2½.
Early in his political career he served in various municipal offices and one term in the Massachusetts House of Representatives (1902–1903).
Curley married twice, first to Mary Emelda Herlihy (1884–1930) in 1906 and then to Gertrude Casey Dennis in 1937, on his last day as governor.
Curley's first notoriety came as a result of having been elected to Boston's Board of Aldermen in 1904 while in prison on a fraud conviction. Curley and an associate, Thomas Curley (no relation), took the civil service exams for postmen for two men in their district to help them get the jobs with the federal government. Though the incident gave him a dark reputation in upper-class circles, it aided his image among the working class and poor because they saw him as a man willing to stick his neck out to help those in need.[7] He kept that reputation for the rest of his life and it was known all over the city that the poor and unemployed often lined up outside his house in the mornings to speak with him about getting a job or to get a handout of a few dollars to get them through the week.
In 1910 while a Member of the Board of Aldermen for the City of Boston, Curley decided to run for the 10th District U.S. congressional seat then occupied by Joseph F. O'Connell. (In the previous general election O'Connell won by a four-vote margin over his Republican opponent,[8] ex-City Clerk J. Mitchell Galvin.)[9] In a three-way primary among O'Connell, Curley, and O'Connell's predecessor William S. McNary, Curley defeated O'Connell[10] and McNary. After winning the nomination of the Democratic party Curley went on to win the general election[11] by a substantial plurality over Galvin, who was again the Republican nominee.[8]
Curley served four terms as Mayor of Boston: 1914-1918, 1922–1926, 1930–1934 and 1946-1950.[12] During his second term in the House of Representatives, Curley's popularity in Boston remained high, even in the face of a felony indictment in 1943 for influence peddling, which stemmed from his involvement with a consulting firm seeking to secure defense contracts. On the slogan "Curley Gets Things Done" he won an unprecedented fourth term as mayor of Boston in 1945. A second indictment by a federal grand jury, for mail fraud, did not harm his campaign and Curley won the election with 45% of the vote.[13]
In June 1947, he was sentenced to 6–18 months on the mail fraud conviction and spent five months at the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut before his sentence was commuted by President Truman under pressure from the Massachusetts congressional delegation. City Clerk John B. Hynes served as acting mayor during his absence. Truman gave Curley a full pardon in 1950 for both his 1904 and 1947 convictions.
A crowd of thousands greeted Curley upon his return to Boston, with a brass band playing "Hail to the Chief".[13] In a fit of hubris after his first day back in office, Curley told reporters, "I have accomplished more in one day than has been done in the five months of my absence."[13] John Hynes, the city clerk and acting mayor, had intentionally held many important agenda items back until Curley's release from prison so the mayor could handle them himself. Angered and insulted by Curley's remark, Hynes ran against him for mayor in the 1949 election, defeating Curley and essentially ending Curley's long political career.[13]
Curley ran for Governor of Massachusetts in 1934, and this time he won, having lost in 1924. Over the course of his term, Curley's extravagant personal spending and expensive vacations drew criticism and series of scandals rocked his administration, including the involvement of his state limousine in several traffic accidents, the alleged sale of pardons to state convicts, and the appointment of poorly qualified individuals, including his brother John, to public offices.
In the late 1930s Curley's political fortunes began to ebb. Denied Franklin Delano Roosevelt's endorsement in the 1936 senatorial election, he lost against a moderate Republican, Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. He was twice defeated, in 1937 and 1940, for the Boston mayoralty by one of his closest former political confidants, Maurice J. Tobin, and in 1938 Leverett Saltonstall turned back Curley's attempt to recapture the Massachusetts governorship. After leaving the office of governor, he squandered a substantial sum of his money in unsuccessful investments in Nevada gold mines; then he lost a civil suit brought by the Suffolk County prosecutor that forced him to forfeit to the city of Boston the $40,000 he received from General Equipment Company for "fixing" a damage claim settlement.
In 1942, however, Curley managed to revive his faltering career by returning to Congress, serving from 1943 to 1947, this time in the 11th district. In defeating his liberal opponent Thomas H. Eliot, a former New Deal attorney with an exemplary voting record on behalf of the Roosevelt administration in the Democratic party primary. Eliot was the son of a Unitarian minister and grandson of Harvard president Charles Eliot and Curley based his campaign on appeals to ethnic, class and religious prejudice against the well to do WASP Eliot. In a quote from a campaign speech which has famously entered Boston political lore, Curley raised the specter of communist leanings in his opponent saying, "There is more Americanism in one half of Jim Curley's ass than in that pink body of Tom Eliot." Curley won in a walk, and once back in Congress, he compiled a voting record that matched his former opponent's in support of the Roosevelt administration's social agenda.
Denied by the then Republican governor a place in the Massachusetts delegation to the 1932 Democratic National Convention, Curley engineered his selection as a delegate from Puerto Rico (under the alias of Alcalde Jaime Curleo). Some say his support was instrumental in winning the presidential nomination for Franklin D. Roosevelt, but he broke with Roosevelt after the President refused to appoint him Ambassador to Ireland.[14]
A failed mayoral bid in 1951 marked the end of his serious political career, although he continued to support other candidates and remain active within the Democratic Party, and even ran for mayor one last time in 1955, his 10th time running for the office. His death in Boston in 1958 led to one of the largest funerals in the city's history.
Curley's personal life was unusually tragic. He outlived his first wife Mary Emelda (née Herlihy), who died in 1930 after a long battle with cancer, and seven of his nine children. Twin sons John and Joseph died in infancy. Daughter Dorothea died of pneumonia as a teenager. His namesake, James Jr., who was being groomed as Curley's political successor, died in 1931 at age 21 following an operation to remove a gallstone. Son Paul, who was an alcoholic, died while Curley ran for mayor in 1945. His remaining daughter Mary died of a stroke in February, 1950 and when her brother Leo was called to the scene, he became so distraught that he, too, suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and died the same day, at age 34. Two remaining sons, George (1919–1983) and Francis X. (1923–1992) a Jesuit priest, outlived Curley.
Curley is honored with two statues at Faneuil Hall, across from Boston's new City Hall. One shows him seated on a park bench, the other shows him standing, as if giving a speech, a campaign button on his lapel. A few feet away is a bar named for one of his symbols, The Purple Shamrock.
His house, known in his time as "the house with the shamrock shutters," located at 350 The Jamaicaway, is now a city historical site. His former summer home in Scituate also has shamrock shutters.
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