Everything about James Michael Curley totally explained
James Michael Curley (
November 20,
1874-
November 12,
1958) was an
American politician who served in the
United States House of Representatives, as the
mayor of
Boston, Massachusetts, and as
Governor of Massachusetts.
Curley was born to immigrants from
County Galway,
Ireland. His father Michael Curley (1850-1884) settled in
Roxbury in 1864 and worked as an unskilled laborer. He died after lifting a heavy object and spending three days in a coma. His mother Sarah (
née Clancy in 1851), who also arrived in 1864, scrubbed floors for a living. His parents married in 1870. He had two brothers: John (1872) and Michael (1879), who died at 2½. James married Mary Emelda Herlihy (1884-1930) in 1906 and Gertrude Casey Dennis in 1937, on his last day as governor.
He served in various municipal offices and one term in the
Massachusetts House of Representatives (1902-1903). He is noted for having been elected to the Board of Aldermen in 1904 while in prison, having been convicted of fraud. 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 respectable circles, it aided his image in working class or poor circles because they saw him as a man willing to stick his neck out to help a poor man.
He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in the (1911-1914). He served four terms as
Mayor of Boston (1914-1918, 1922-1926, 1930-1934 and 1946-1950).
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 showed, however, that he'd lost touch with his constituents. A 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 scores of poorly qualified individuals 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. In 1937 and 1940 one of Curley's former political confidants,
Maurice J. Tobin, twice defeated him for the Boston mayoralty, 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 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 amount of money 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 . In defeating Thomas H. Eliot, a former
New Deal attorney with an exemplary voting record on behalf of the Roosevelt administration, Curley based his campaign on appeals to ethnic and religious pride. Once back in Congress, he compiled a voting record that matched his former opponent's in support of the Roosevelt administration's social agenda.
Curley's popularity within Boston remained high – despite even 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 federal jury then found him guilty of the felony charges, but he remained mayor even after he entered a federal penitentiary in 1947, serving until 1949.
In
1947, during his last mayoral term, he was convicted for a second time on federal charges of official misconduct, including
mail fraud. He spent five months in jail during this term, but still retained a considerable degree of popularity with the working classes. Out of political expediency and because of pressure from the Massachusetts congressional delegation, President
Harry Truman pardoned him, enabling his release.
The city clerk,
John Hynes, ran the city during his incarceration, and intentionally held many large items in limbo until Curley got released from prison so the mayor could handle them himself. Upon release Curley told the manager he was grateful for what he'd done, but then told the media that he'd accomplished more in his first day back as mayor than the manager had over the previous several months. Livid, Hynes felt betrayed, and this anger fueled Hynes' successful run for mayor in
1949.
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. That was his 10th time running for Boston's mayor. His death in Boston led to one of the largest funerals in the city's history.
Curley had an unusually tragic personal life. He outlived his first wife and seven of his nine children. Two twins died shortly after childbirth. One of his two daughters died while a teenager. His namesake, James Jr., who was groomed as Curley's political heir, died in his early adulthood. Another son who had a drinking problem died while Curley ran for mayor in 1945. Finally, his remaining daughter and another son both died of strokes on the same day in 1950. Both were in the same room of Curley's house talking on the same phone when they'd their two strokes. Two other sons outlived Curley. One son, Francis, became a
Jesuit.
Curley is honored with not one, but 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.
Trivia
- Curley is considered the inspiration for the protagonist Frank Skeffington in the novel and film The Last Hurrah by Edwin O'Connor.
- Curley was the inspiration for the song Rascal King on the album Let's Face It by The Mighty Mighty Bosstones.
- Since Curley every Boston Mayor has been driven in a car with the license registration 576 - which were the corresponding numbers for his first, middle, and last name. James (5) Michael (7) Curley (6).
- The Curley family still holds Massachusetts auto registration number 5.
- Curley appeared at the Harvard University commencement ceremony in 1935 in his role as Governor wearing silk stockings, knee britches, a powdered wig, and a three-cornered hat with flowing plume. When University marshals objected to his costume, the story goes, Curley whipped out a copy of the Statutes of the Massachusetts Bay Colony which prescribed proper dress for the occasion and claimed that he was the only person at the ceremony properly dressed.
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