Joseph Brazil was born on September 17, 1907, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to John Antonio Brazil and Maria Augusta Silva DeSoto, two Portuguese immigrants. He grew up with four sisters and two brothers at 33 Charles Street, Cambridge and completed school through the sixth grade. Mr. Brazil stood 5'6", had black hair, brown eyes, and a scar on his upper lip. In 1929, he married Katherine Blood, the daughter of two Irish immigrants. The couple lived with Mr. Brazil's family on Bristol Street in Cambridge, where he worked as a laborer in a junkyard as part of the W.P.A.
By 1940, Mr. Brazil had entered the Massachusetts State Prison. He died suddenly on August 12, 1948, two weeks before his scheduled release, in the prison's automobile plate registration shop. He was 40.
