Do others or they will do you," was one of his mottos, and it was said that he won the 1921 election against fellow Roman Catholic John R. Murphy by accusing Murphy of eating a roast-beef sandwich, on a Friday, at a restaurant named Thompson's Spa. But many of Boston's Irish and Italians loved James Michael Curley for his charm and his chicanery, as well as for the free hand he had with public funds on behalf of the poor. Curley was famous for having insisted that the scrubwomen in city hall be given long-handled brushes, the better to spare their knees.
When he died at age 83 in 1958, Curley had run Massachusetts as Governor for a term and was four times sent to the U.S. House of Representatives. But he was mayor of Boston ("Mayor of the Poor," he was called) for a full 16 years, four terms, the last of which was partly spent in jail on a mail-fraud conviction. Hizzoner continued to draw his salary while behind bars, gracefully donating it to other Boston prisoners.
Bostonians never got around to naming anything much after Curley except a recreation building at a city hospital, an elementary school and a public bath. Then Boston planners learned that the city was about to receive some special building funds. The bequest came from an upper-crust Yankee lawyer named Edward Ingersoll Browne, who left part of his trust to the city of Boston "for the adornment and benefit of said city by the erection of statues, monuments, fountains for men and beasts and for the adornment of its streets, ways, squares and parks." James Michael Curley's commemorative moment seemed to have come.
When something called the Browne Commission was created to distribute the money, a group of architects produced a plan for a Curley Mall along the Freedom Trail, which included benches for footsore travelers bound for such historic sites as Faneuil Hall, the Paul Revere House and the Old North Church. On the middle bench, they proposed to seat a life-sized statue of James Michael Curley, resting himself among the citizenry. The plan gathered dust until last fall when the commission was finally persuaded to spring a paltry $65,000 for James Michael Curley's park and bronze statue, as part of a package of $1.45 million worth of embellishments for Boston. Unanimously, the city council approved the general funding last Sept. 12.
The brief notice of the appropriation in the Boston Globe stirred little comment until City Councillor Frederick Langone spoke out about it. "Curley never sat on a bench in his life," Langone cried. He should have something "more dignified." In reply, one William E. O'Halloran of Newtonville took pen in hand and tongue in cheek. A mere $65,000 was "not nearly enough," O'Halloran opined in the Boston Globe's letters column. But there is another way that "will cost us nothing and accomplish much." Concluded O'Halloran: "There is no longer any viable reason we should call our river after an obscure and no-account English King. We should spend nothing and rename the Charles River the Curley River."