Joseph Walsh (Massachusetts)

He was born on December 16, 1875 in Brighton, Massachusetts.

Walsh attended public schools in Falmouth, Massachusetts and the Boston University School of Law. He was admitted to the bar in 1906 and practiced in New Bedford, Massachusetts. He served as a fish culturist and clerk in the United States Bureau of Fisheries at Woods Hole, Mass., 1900–1905 and also engaged in newspaper reporting in Boston and New Bedford, Mass.. He was a member of the State house of representatives in 1905, elected as a Republican to the Sixty-fourth and to the three succeeding Congresses and served from March 4, 1915, to August 21, 1922, when he resigned to accept a judicial position.

In 1917, he opposed the creation of a committee to deal with women's suffrage. Walsh thought the creation of a committee would be yielding to "the nagging of iron-jawed angels" and referred to the women picketing Woodrow Wilson's White House (the Silent Sentinels) as "bewildered, deluded creatures with short skirts and short hair."[1] It is from this that the film Iron Jawed Angels gets its name.[1] The use of steel holding open the jaws of the women being force-fed after the Silent Sentinel arrests and hunger strike is also a plot point in the film.

He was appointed August 2, 1922, as a justice of the superior court of Massachusetts, in which capacity he served until his death. He died in New Bedford, Massachusetts on January 13, 1946. He was buried in St. Mary's Cemetery.

• United States Congress. "Joseph Walsh (id: W000101)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.