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James M. Curley

James Michael Curley
James Michael Curley.jpg
35th Mayor of Boston
In office
January 7, 1946 – January 5, 1950
Preceded by John E. Kerrigan
Succeeded by John Hynes
In office
January 1, 1930 – January 5, 1934
Preceded by Malcolm Nichols
Succeeded by Frederick Mansfield
In office
January 1, 1922 – January 5, 1926
Preceded by Andrew James Peters
Succeeded by Malcolm Nichols
Majority 2,315
In office
January 1, 1914 – January 5, 1918
Preceded by John F. Fitzgerald
Succeeded by Andrew James Peters
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
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 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 10th district
In office
March 4, 1911 – March 4, 1913
Preceded by Joseph F. O'Connell
Succeeded by William Francis Murray
Member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives
from the 4th Suffolk district
In office
1902–1903
Personal details
Born (1874-11-20)November 20, 1874
Boston, Massachusetts. U.S.
Died November 12, 1958(1958-11-12) (aged 83)
Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Political party Democratic
Spouse(s) Mary Emelda Herlihy (m. 1906; her death 1930)
Gertrude Casey (m. 1937; his death 1958)
Children 7 children
2 stepsons
Profession Politician
Religion Roman Catholicism

James Michael Curley (November 20, 1874 – November 12, 1958) was an American Democratic Party politician from Boston, Massachusetts. One of the most colorful figures in Massachusetts politics in the first half of the 20th century, Curley served four terms as Democratic Mayor of Boston, Massachusetts, including part of one while in prison. He also served a single term as Governor of Massachusetts, characterized by one biographer as "a disaster mitigated only by moments of farce", for its free spending and corruption.

Curley was immensely popular with working-class Roman Catholic Irish Americans in Boston, among whom he grew up and became active in ward politics. During the Great Depression, he enlarged Boston City Hospital, expanded the city's public transit system (now the MBTA), funded projects to improve the roads and bridges, and improved the neighborhoods with beaches and bathhouses, playgrounds and parks, public schools and libraries, all the while collecting graft and raising taxes. He became a leading and at times divisive force in the state's Democratic Party, contesting for power with its White Anglo-Saxon Protestant leadership at the local and state levels, and with Boston's ward bosses. He served two terms in the United States Congress, and was regularly a candidate for a variety of local and state offices for half a century. He was twice convicted of crimes, and notably served time for a felony conviction related to earlier corruption during his last term as mayor.

James Michael Curley was born in Boston's Roxbury neighborhood in 1874. Curley's father Michael left Oughterard,County Galway, Ireland, at the age of 14, and settled in Roxbury, where he met Curley's mother, Sarah Clancy, also from County Galway. Roxbury, originally an independent city, was annexed to Boston in 1868, and Michael Curley worked as a day laborer and foot soldier for ward boss P. James "Pea-Jacket" Maguire.


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