Joseph F. Quinn

Who was Joseph F. Quinn?

Joseph F. Quinn was the first Irishman elevated to the bench in Massachusetts who served for in that capacity for any significant period of time. He served on the Essex County Superior Court after being appointed by Governor Eugene Foss in 1911. He lived in Salem and was the son of an immigrant from the days of the potato famine. He attended University of Ottawa in Canada due to discrimination against the Irish in the U.S. at the time, graduating in 1881, and went on to earn his law degree from Boston University School of Law in 1884. After working for the local U.S. Attorney, Joseph Quinn started his own thriving practice.

Joseph Quinn was associated with John F. Fitzgerald and Patrick Kennedy, with his son being Kennedy's son Joseph Kennedy's roommate at Harvard University at one point. His great grandson, Joseph F. Quinn is a noted economist on social security issues who was formerly Dean of Arts & Sciences at Boston College. Judge Quinn presided over many prominent cases including the trial of Joseph Ettor and other leaders of the Lawrence textile strike in 1912 which became a national cause celebre and resulted in the defendants' acquittal. The next year he was the judge in the widely publicized trial of William Dorr of Stockton, California who was convicted and sentenced to death for having traveled all the way back East to Lynn, Massachusetts in order to murder millionaire George Marsh as part of a scheme to inherit his money through an unwitting California niece. Dorr was executed in the electric chair in 1914.