Lomasney wielded considerable influence in city and state politics for over 40 years and was nicknamed "the Mahatma" for his uncanny ability to deliver votes for his preferred candidates.

In the course of his colorful career, Lomasney was shot once, feuded with James Michael Curley and John F. Fitzgerald, told the Archbishop of Boston to "mind his own business," advised Al Smith, played a major role in the drafting of the current Massachusetts Constitution, and helped thousands of constituents obtain jobs, housing, and other necessities.

[7] The boys were expected to earn their keep, and Martin dropped out of school at age 10 to shine shoes, deliver papers and, later, work in a machine shop.

[7] In 1884, Lomasney went to work as a ward heeler for Mike Wells, a local politician, and was rewarded with a city job as a lamplighter on Boston's Nashua Street.

[10] Lomasney kept an office on the second floor, where he spent his days dispensing and calling in favors for supporters: jobs, housing, immigration assistance, coal in the winter, influence in court cases, funeral expenses, and seed money for business ventures.

"[11] Lomasney frequently sent aides to the docks in East Boston to meet new immigrants and to carry signs that read, "Welcome to America.

Often, the newcomers were desperately poor and unskilled, and the Hendricks Club would help them find manual labor and decent housing.

[13] On the Sunday before every election, ward residents would pack the large hall to hear Lomasney speak on the issues and candidates of the day.

Former residents of the ward often traveled long distances to attend his "sermons," and local newspapers sent their best reporters to cover the event.

A common practice was to send aides dressed as Protestant clergymen to "campaign" for rival candidates in Irish Catholic neighborhoods.

Both factions then raced their paperwork across the harbor by ferry and tugboat and then to cyclists, who pedaled furiously up Beacon Hill to the State House.

[18] In 1912, when the Suffolk Evening Law School petitioned the state legislature for the right to grant degrees, elites on the Massachusetts Board of Education, the Boston Bar Association, and Harvard University objected.

[23] At the Democratic National Conventions in St. Louis in 1916 and in San Francisco in 1920, Lomasney tried to have a plank added to the party platform endorsing the independence of Ireland.

He was a leader, a hard hitter, a fair fighter, generous, sympathetic, respected by all who came close enough to feel the strength of his personal qualities.

The first allowed the state and local governments to provide the people with food, shelter, and other necessities in times of war or emergency.

[28] When Archbishop of Boston William Henry O'Connell pressured him to oppose the amendment, Lomasney reportedly said, "Tell His Eminence to mind his own business.

[31] His final political battle took place in 1932, when he led the successful campaign of William M. Prendible for Clerk of the Suffolk County Superior Criminal Court.

Historian Thomas H. O'Connor called Leslie G. Ainley's Boston Mahatma: Martin Lomasney (1949) "a fascinating but undocumented account" of his life.

Even a rival, John F. Fitzgerald (also known as "Honey Fitz"), told a historian years later that Ward Eight had been too closely watched for Lomasney to have been able to get away with that.