Joseph Francis Quinn (1857–1929) was the first Irish American to become a judge inMassachusetts for any significant period of time. He served on the bench of theEssex County Superior Court after being appointed by GovernorEugene Foss in 1911 until his death in 1929.[1][2] He lived inSalem and was the son of an immigrant from the days of theGreat Famine. He attended theUniversity of Ottawa in Canada due to discrimination against the Irish in the U.S. at the time, graduating in 1881, and went on to be admitted to the bar in Massachusetts in 1884 after attendingBoston University School of Law and apprenticing under a local attorney.[3][4] After working for the local U.S. Attorney, Joseph Quinn started his own thriving practice.
Joseph Quinn was associated withJohn F. Fitzgerald and Patrick Kennedy (P. J. Kennedy) and other prominent local persons in the greater Boston area. Judge Quinn presided over many prominent cases including the trial ofJoseph Ettor and other leaders of the storied "Bread & Roses"Lawrence textile strike in 1912 which became a nationalcause célèbre and resulted in the defendants' acquittal.[5][6][7][8] While his handling of this historic case was praised, there were many within the radical labor milieu supporting the defendants who believed he, like many in positions of authority at the time, harbored a deep seated conservative bias against them.[9][10][11]
The next year Joseph Quinn 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.[12] Dorr was executed in the electric chair in 1914.[13][14][15][16]