Background
William O'Dwyer was born on July 11, 1890, in Bohola, County Mayo, Ireland. He was one of eleven children of Patrick O'Dwyer and Bridget McNicholas, both of whom were schoolteachers.
William O'Dwyer was born on July 11, 1890, in Bohola, County Mayo, Ireland. He was one of eleven children of Patrick O'Dwyer and Bridget McNicholas, both of whom were schoolteachers.
O'Dwyer received his early education in his father's class. Then he studied at St. Nathays College in Roscommon, Ireland. From 1907 to 1910 he attended the Jesuit University of Salamanca in Spain with the intention of becoming a priest, but left three years short of graduation.
Later in life, he studied law in the evening at Fordham University Law School and received an LL. B. in 1923.
Because of his rejection of the priesthood, which William O'Dwyer considered a reproach to his parents, he decided not to return to Ireland. O'Dwyer arrived in New York in June 1910, reputedly with only $23. 35 in his pocket. For the next seven years he worked as a grocery clerk, a deckhand on a freighter, a fireman on a Hudson River boat, a hod carrier and plasterer (long enough to get a union card), and a bartender at the Vanderbilt Hotel.
O'Dwyer became a United States citizen in 1916. The next year he joined the New York City police force and began to study law in the evening at Fordham University Law School. He received an LL. B. in 1923 and was admitted to the New York Bar. In 1924 he became head of the legal bureau of the New York City Police Department, but resigned a year later to become a clerk in a law office.
In 1926 he opened a private law practice with city alderman George J. Joyce. In his spare time O'Dwyer was a sports promoter, bringing Irish soccer teams to New York City. This put him in contact with Mrs. William Randolph Hearst, who introduced him to Joseph V. McKee, president of the Board of Aldermen and later acting mayor of New York.
On December 7, 1932, Acting-Mayor McKee appointed O'Dwyer a city magistrate. As city magistrate, O'Dwyer took a special interest in juvenile delinquents, and in 1933 Mayor Fiorello La Guardia appointed him presiding judge of an experimental adolescent court in Brooklyn. Favorable publicity led Governor Herbert H. Lehman to appoint him to the unexpired term of judge in the County Court of Kings County in 1937. The following year he won election to a fourteen-year term.
In 1939 he resigned to run for district attorney of Kings County. He was elected in 1940. O'Dwyer's term as district attorney got off to a dubious start. He had promised to remain independent of political bosses, but of his first forty appointments, thirty-three came from lists supplied by Democratic district leaders. An in-progress investigation into the Brooklyn waterfront racketeering unions controlled by mobster Albert Anastasia was dropped. But his work as special prosecutor of an underworld execution squad to which fifty-six homicides had been traced won him national attention. Working with his assistant, Burton B. Turkus, O'Dwyer connected eighty-five homicides in New York City and one thousand throughout the country to the ring, which was dubbed by the press "Murder, Inc. " The ring was smashed and seven members were sent to the electric chair. As a result of this work, O'Dwyer received the Democratic nomination for mayor of New York in 1941. But he was unable to defeat the popular incumbent, Fiorello La Guardia.
The moment he heard the news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, O'Dwyer telegraphed President Franklin D. Roosevelt, offering his services. He was commissioned a major. After filling several posts within the United States and advancing to the rank of brigadier general in 1944, he was chosen by Roosevelt as chief of the Economic Section of the Allied Commission, and was sent to Italy to represent the Foreign Economic Administration, with the rank of minister and the status of personal representative of the president.
In 1945, O'Dwyer again ran for mayor. Despite a campaign in which his district attorneyship was described as "a rotten mess" and accusations of gangland connections were made, he was elected by the widest margin ever enjoyed by a mayor of New York. In 1949, O'Dwyer was reelected mayor. In December of that year Brooklyn district attorney Miles F. McDonald launched a probe into gambling and police corruption. O'Dwyer's obvious opposition to the probe shocked the public. Twelve days after being sworn in as mayor, and as the scandal grew, O'Dwyer left for Florida, suffering from nervous exhaustion and a viral infection. After Bronx boss and national Democratic committeeman Edward J. Flynn had rushed to Washington to confer with President Harry Truman, it was announced in August 1950 that O'Dwyer had been nominated as American ambassador to Mexico.
On September 1, 1950, O'Dwyer resigned as mayor of New York. Before doing so, he handed out $125, 000 in raises to close friends on the city payroll. To deputy fire commissioner James J. Moran, who was known as the mayor's alter ego, went a $15, 000-a-year lifetime appointment as commissioner of water supply. Soon afterward, an investigation of Brooklyn bookmaker Harry Gross disclosed that Moran had solicited funds for O'Dwyer's election from all the bookies in town. The Gross case helped set the stage for the New York sessions of the Senate Crime Committee, headed by Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee.
In the spring of 1951, the Kefauver Committee began televised hearings in New York City. O'Dwyer flew from Mexico City to appear before the committee on March 19, 1951. His opening statement was a rambling account of his life and his accomplishments as mayor. Senator Charles W. Tobey of New Hampshire interrupted this monologue, and his searing cross-examination lasted two days. As a result, although no charges of wrongdoing were made, it became apparent that O'Dwyer had had dealings with criminal elements, in particular racketeer Frank Costello.
The Kefauver Commission's report stated: "A single pattern of conduct emerges from O'Dwyer's official activities in regard to gambling and water-front rackets, murders, and police corruption, from his days as district attorney through his term as mayor. No matter what the motivation of his choice, action or inaction, it often seemed to result favorably for men suspected of being high up in the rackets. " After publication of the Kefauver report, O'Dwyer returned to Mexico and resumed his duties as ambassador. But the hearings had ruined his political career, and the president was faced with demands for his recall.
With the election of the Republican Eisenhower administration, O'Dwyer resigned as ambassador on December 6, 1952. He remained in Mexico City as a consultant to the law firm of O'Dwyer, Bernstein and Correa. He became involved in various schemes, including a process to change salt water into fresh water and a patent to preserve meat by radiation. He also helped finance a motion picture on Mexico. In 1960 he returned to New York City, where he died.
O'Dwyer was the stereotype of the affable Irish politician. His meteoric rise in New York politics was due as much to hard work as to an uncanny sense of political timing and a thorough understanding of machine politics.
William O'Dwyer was a member of the Democratic party.
O'Dwyer was a squarely built, black-haired, blue-eyed man.
William O'Dwyer married Catherine M. Lenihan, a telephone operator whom he had met at the Vanderbilt, on August 3, 1916. They had no children. In 1946, his wife, who had become increasingly debilitated by Parkinson's disease, died. On December 20, 1949, after a highly publicized courtship, he married Elizabeth Sloan Simpson, a former model and a divorcée. They had no children. On December 6, 1952, his wife left him, and they were soon divorced.