Richard S. Whaley

Richard S. Whaley

Richard Smith Whaley (born July 15, 1874 in Charleston , South Carolina , †  November 8, 1951 ) was an American lawyer and politician . Between 1913 and 1921 he represented the state of South Carolina in the US House of Representatives .

Career

Richard Whaley initially attended Episcopal High School in Alexandria ( Virginia ). After a subsequent law degree at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and his admission to the bar in 1897, he began to work in Charleston in this profession.

Politically, Whaley joined the Democratic Party . Between 1901 and 1910 and again in 1913 he was a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives ; between 1907 and 1910 he was president of this chamber. In 1913 he was acting President of Parliament ( Speaker pro Tempore ). In 1910, Whaley chaired the regional Democratic Party convention in South Carolina. In 1912 and 1920 he was a delegate to the Democratic National Conventions , where Woodrow Wilson and later James M. Cox were nominated as presidential candidates.

After the death of Congressman George Swinton Legaré , Whaley was elected as his successor to the US House of Representatives in Washington, DC in the due by-election in the first constituency of South Carolina . There he took up his new mandate on April 29, 1913. After he was confirmed in each of the three subsequent regular elections, he could remain in Congress until March 3, 1921 . During this time the First World War fell . In addition, the 18th and 19th amendments to the Constitution were discussed and passed in these years . It was about the Prohibition Act and the nationwide introduction of women's suffrage .

In 1920 Whaley declined to run again. In the following years he worked again as a lawyer. In 1925 he was employed by the Court of Claims . In 1930 President Herbert Hoover appointed him judge in that federal court . Between 1939 and 1947 he chaired it. Then he retired. Richard Whaley died on November 8, 1951 in his native Charleston.

Web links

• Richard S. Whaley in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)

• Richard S. Whaley in database Find a Grave (English)