Why John F. Dowd is on this page

John F. Dowd (28 November 1895 – 9 August 1961) was an American Democratic politician from Boston, Massachusetts, who served thirteen years on the Boston City Council (1926–1938) and a brief, scandal-ending term as Sheriff of Suffolk County (December 1938 – November 1939). His tenure as sheriff collapsed in a kickback-and-comforts scheme that made him one of the most colourful corruption fugitives of pre-war American politics: indicted, gone for twenty-two months under an assumed name, and finally caught on a drunk-driving stop in San Luis Obispo, California.

Dowd was born in Boston, served eighteen months as a first lieutenant in the U.S. Army during the First World War (not deployed overseas), and ran a florist’s shop until it went bankrupt in 1932. He came up through Ward 8’s Tammany Club under James Michael Curley, was appointed Director of Americanization by Curley in 1921, and won a council seat in 1926 which he held for twelve years, becoming Council President in 1934. In 1938 he defeated the twenty-one-year incumbent John A. Keliher in the Democratic primary; Keliher died on primary day, and Governor Charles F. Hurley appointed Dowd to finish the term.

Once in office at the Charles Street Jail, Dowd built an extensive kickback ladder. Deputy sheriffs were expected to pay $2,500 a year, guards between $500 and $2,500, and chorewomen $250. In exchange, paying prisoners received an extraordinary set of comforts: access to the hospital wing (with ping-pong tables, radios, books, and a solarium), meals from the city’s best restaurants, open cell doors, unrestricted phone and visitor access, and the use of a cocktail bar in the sheriff’s office. One prisoner, Reverend William M. Forgrave, was permitted to run a bookmaking operation from inside the jail. The scheme was uncovered when Superior Court auditor Reuben Lurie, investigating a separate clerk, was tipped off by an employee.

In September 1939 the Boston Bar Association petitioned the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court to remove Dowd for soliciting and accepting bribes. Three days before his removal hearing, he signed a resignation letter, left it with his attorney, and slipped to New York City; the next day he turned up injured on a Manhattan sidewalk, was treated at Bellevue Hospital, and used an emergency fire exit to evade reporters. A grand jury indicted him on 27 November 1939 on charges of seeking $36,000 in gratuities. His photograph and fingerprints went out nationwide. The trail led variously to Mexico City, Honolulu, and California — he avoided capture each time.

On 22 September 1941, living in Ventura, California, under the name John W. Norton, Dowd was arrested on a drunk-driving charge in San Luis Obispo, fined $50, and unmasked when his fingerprints came back as those of a federal fugitive. He pleaded guilty in Massachusetts on 17 October 1941 to conspiracy and to soliciting and accepting gratuities, and was sentenced to two concurrent terms of six to eight years. He was paroled in October 1945 and died quietly in Dorchester in 1961.

Sources

• Wikipedia — John F. Dowd.
• Wikidata Q51525959.
• Boston Bar Association petition, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (September 1939).

Heritage notes

Family root: irish-diaspora-named.

The directory threads John F. Dowd back to the O'Dubhda clan story via the surname-variants reality — the same family carried these spellings as it scattered. See the septs and the diaspora for the wider pattern, or the Clan DNA Project for the genetic connections being mapped now.