6 – William Boss Tweed
The next elected representative who went rogue was also from the United States. The scandal that consumed him involved sums of money which would have been eye-watering to most people in the nineteenth century.
He was born in New York City in 1823 and quickly became involved in the city’s politics from quite a young age. He was a city alderman by the time he turned 28 and he held other offices in an attempt to build his position in the city’s Democratic Party. In 1852, he was elected to Congress. Tweed’s influence in New York politics gradually increased and in 1856 he was elected to a new, city-wide board of supervisors, which he would later exploit for his corrupt activities. By 1860, he was in control of all the Democratic Party’s nominations to city positions in New York. Eventually, Boss Tweed’s power over the city extended so far that his candidates were elected to the position of mayor of New York City, governor of New York and speaker of the state assembly.
Over quite a short space of time, Boss Tweed built up a network of associates occupying pivotal city and county posits. It became known as the “Tweed Ring“. In 1860, he opened a law office (though he was not a lawyer) and received significant payments from corporations for legal services which were actually extortions hidden under the guise of the law. He amassed massive sums of money and bought up acres of property in Manhattan. He wore a diamond attached to his shirt, for which he was lampooned mercilessly by his critics.
In 1868, Tweed became the leader of Tammany Hall and was also elected to the New York State Senate. In 1870, he and his associates obtained control over the city’s treasury when they passed a city charter naming them as the board of audit. The Tweed ring was therefore now able to drain New York City of its money via fraudulent leases, fake vouchers extortionately increased bills and other schemes it governed. The losses the Tweed ring caused to New York City are estimated to run to between $30 and $200 million dollars in today’s money. The damage caused increased the public’s backing for efforts by The New York Times newspapers (among others) to reveal Tweed and have him punished for the activities over which he presided. In 1873, Tweed was accordingly tried and convicted for forgery and larceny. Though he was released shortly afterwards in 1875, New York State filed a civil action against him to try to recover the millions he had fraudulently acquired and the authorities arrested him again.
Events later took a dramatic turn when Tweed escaped from jail. He went first to Cuba and then to Spain in the hope of avoiding pursuit. After a period spent on the run, Tweed was captured in late 1876 and extradited to the USA. He was confined to a New York City jail, where he died from severe pneumonia.