Page "David I. Walsh" Paragraph 47

Walsh never married.

He and his brother Thomas, who died in 1931, supported their four unmarried sisters, two of whom outlived the Senator.

Walsh's homosexuality has been accepted by historians.

Writing in the 1960s, former Attorney General Francis Biddle hinted at the subject when he described Walsh in the mid-1930s as " an elderly politician with a soft tread and low, colorless voice ... whose concealed and controlled anxieties not altogether centered on retaining his job.

" According to Gore Vidal, interviewed in 1974, " There wasn't anybody in Massachusetts ... who didn't know what David Walsh was up to.

" Walsh's most recent biographer writes that " The campaign to destroy David I. Walsh worked because he could not defend himself .... David I. Walsh was gay.