 Over the years, as the Irish began moving to Roxbury and Dorchester, and the city zoning board expanded the ward to include the North and South Ends, Lomasney managed to bring together a large, ethnically diverse coalition of mostly poor and working-class voters.Lomasney was born in the West End of Boston to Maurice Lomasney, a tailor, and Mary Murray Lomasney.His parents were immigrants from Fermoy, County Cork, Ireland, who had fled the Great Famine.