Topic: Politics & Law
Politics, politicians, political clubs, laws, lawyers, courts, jurisprudence, criminals, crime, law enforcement, jails
In 1946, two of John F. Kennedy’s Democratic primary opponents for Massachusetts’ Eleventh Congressional District were from the West End, and both were named Joe Russo. One was a popular city councillor and undertaker, the other a janitor who entered the race under suspect circumstances.
Harrison & Sally Otis Harrison Grey Otis was a major political and business figure in Boston during the Federalist Period. He is best known as a supporter of Charles Bulfinch, as Boston’s third mayor, and as a leader of the Hartford Convention. His wife, Sally, was a skilled socialite and hostess, who provided significant support for…
Dr. Thomas Jenks, one of Boston’s leading figures in medicine, business, and politics during the late-eighteenth century, lived in the West End for most of his life. In 1893, when Jenks chaired the Board of Public Institutions, his refusal to accept a donation of rocking chairs to the Rainsford Island hospital put him at odds with Alice Lincoln, an advocate for the poor in Boston, and Martin Lomasney, the political boss of the West End.
The West End Woman Suffrage League connected African-American leaders in the old West End to the larger movement for women’s suffrage in Boston, the rest of New England, and the country as a whole.
Augustus Mantia and his family owned the West End parking lot Staniford Street during the 1960s. Cars parked on an unpaved field where vibrant tenements once stood before their demolition by the Boston Redevelopment Authority in the late 1950s. Public backlash against the Mantias’ monopoly over the lot – with high profits, abnormally low rent, and no competitive bidding process – led the City to close the parking lot in January 1971.
Charles Chambers was a West End landowner and a judge on the Court of Common Pleas from 1719 to 1739.
“Doc” Sagansky, the Jewish gambling boss who became the oldest organized crime figure to serve prison time, is one of the old West End’s more notorious residents. The money Sagansky made from illegal bookkeeping funded his business ventures and philanthropy: legitimate on the surface, corrupt at the source.
Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin and George Ruffin were eminent African-American residents of the West End in the late nineteenth-century. Josephine’s newspaper, The Woman’s Era, was published from her home and instrumental to the founding of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) in 1896. She was its first vice president.
