Henry Converse Atwill (1872–1936) was an American politician who served as

Massachusetts Attorney General The Massachusetts Attorney General is an elected constitutionally defined executive officer of the Massachusetts Government. The officeholder is the chief lawyer and law enforcement officer of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The officeholder ...

from 1915 to 1919. He was born in Lynn in 1872. Atwill served in the

Massachusetts House of Representatives The Massachusetts House of Representatives is the lower house of the Massachusetts General Court, the state legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It is composed of 160 members elected from 14 counties each divided into single-member ...

from 1896 to 1898 and the

Massachusetts Senate The Massachusetts Senate is the upper house of the Massachusetts General Court, the bicameral state legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The Senate comprises 40 elected members from 40 single-member senatorial districts in the st ...

from 1899 to 1901. From 1905 to 1910 he was an Assistant District Attorney in

Essex County, Massachusetts Essex County is a county in the northeastern part of the U.S. state of Massachusetts. At the 2020 census, the total population was 809,829, making it the third-most populous county in the state, and the eightieth-most populous in the countr ...

. When District Attorney W. Scott Peters retired, Atwill was elected to succeed him. As Essex County DA, Atwill oversaw the prosecution of Joseph James Ettor,

Arturo Giovannitti Arturo M. Giovannitti (; 1884–1959) was an Italian-American union leader, socialist political activist, and poet. He is best remembered as one of the principal organizers of the 1912 Lawrence textile strike and as a defendant in a celebrated tri ...

, and

Joseph Caruso Joseph is a common male given name, derived from the Hebrew Yosef (יוֹסֵף). "Joseph" is used, along with "Josef", mostly in English, French and partially German languages. This spelling is also found as a variant in the languages of the mo ...

for the murder of

Anna Lopizzo Anna LoPizzo was an Italian-American, Italian immigrant striker killed during the Lawrence Textile Strike (also known as the Bread and Roses Strike), considered one of the most significant struggles in U.S. labor history. Eugene Debs said of the str ...

during the

1912 Lawrence Textile Strike The Lawrence Textile Strike, also known as the Bread and Roses Strike, was a strike of immigrant workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1912 led by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Prompted by a two-hour pay cut corresponding to a ne ...

. Atwill was elected Attorney General in 1914. He resigned in 1919 and Henry A. Wyman completed his term. He died November 1, 1936.

References

1872 births 1936 deaths Boston University School of Law alumni Massachusetts Attorneys General Republican Party members of the Massachusetts House of Representatives Republican Party Massachusetts state senators Politicians from Lynn, Massachusetts Massachusetts lawyers 20th-century American politicians {{Massachusetts-MASenate-stub