Wolf, Harry Benjamin, 1880-1944

Harry Benjamin Wolf (June 16, 1880 – February 17, 1944) was an American lawyer and politician. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as a U.S. Representative from Maryland's 3rd congressional district from 1907 to 1909.

Born in Baltimore, Maryland, he attended the public schools there bedfore graduating from the law department of the University of Maryland, Baltimore in 1901. Admitted to the Maryland bar that same year, he commenced practicing law in Baltimore, specialising in criminal cases, and also engaged in the real estate business and hotel-property investments, even creating a successful ferry company. Wolf served as a member of the Maryland House of Delegates from 1906 to 1908. He was elected as a Democrat to the Sixtieth Congress, serving from March 4, 1907 to March 3, 1909. He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1908 to the Sixty-first Congress, being beaten by John Kronmiller, and resumed the practice of his profession and other business interests in Baltimore.

From 1911, Wolf, along with other lawyers, was involved in a scheme to get cheaper housemaids for prominent Baltimore families by using Habeas corpus writs for Rosewood Center mentally challenged inmates. Once released into the custody of these families, they were often mistreated, with a low or even no pay, and sometimes abandoned in the streets when these families complained about their low productivity, or else dying from the poor labor conditions. In 1922, defending 19-year-old Walter Socolow, one of the five persons arrested for the murder of William Norris, Wolf saved him from hanging, while being held guilty by the jury, by conspiring with one of Socolow's accomplices to destroy the confession of another accomplice, who had turned State's evidence. Wolf was held guilty of obstructing justice and placed on probation.

He died in Baltimore, and is interred in the Hebrew Friendship Cemetery.