Linthicum was born on 26 November 1867 near
Baltimore, Maryland, in the locality now known as
Linthicum Heights,
Anne Arundel County, the son of Sweetser Linthicum Sr. (1824–1905) and Laura Ellen Smith (1829–1910). He and his many siblings attended the public schools of Anne Arundel County and Baltimore. He graduated from the
Maryland State Normal School in Baltimore in 1886, and became principal of the Braddock School in
Frederick County, Maryland, in 1887. He also taught in the schools of Anne Arundel County, and studied history and political science at
Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He graduated from the law school at the
University of Maryland School of Law in Baltimore in 1890, and was admitted to the bar and commenced practice in Baltimore in 1890. In 1893 he married Eugenia May Biden but she died in 1897. In 1898, he married at Emmanuel Protestant Episcopal Church of Baltimore as his second wife Helen Aletta Perry (1868–1944), widow of wealthy jeweler Gilbert D. Clark (d. 8 Dec 1896) and daughter of a prominent medical doctor. By 1900, his younger brother Seth Hance Linthicum was the junior partner in their growing law firm, while both were partners with their younger brother Wade Hampton Linthicum in the Linthicum Realty Company, and with their brother Dr. George Milton Linthicum in the
Linthicum Heights Company. Linthicum served as a member of the
Maryland House of Delegates in 1904 and 1905, and in the
Maryland State Senate from 1906 to 1909. He was an unsuccessful candidate for
mayor of Baltimore in 1907, and was a judge advocate general on the staff of
Maryland Governor Austin Lane Crothers from 1908 to 1912. He was elected as a
Democrat to the Sixty-second and to the ten succeeding Congresses and served from March 4, 1911, until his death. Linthicum's most important role in Congress was that of the leader of the Wets (those who advocated the repeal of alcohol
prohibition), succeeding
John Philip Hill in 1927. Working with
Republican James M. Beck of Pennsylvania, Linthicum co-wrote and in 1932 introduced the Beck-Linthicum Bill which was designed to repeal the
18th Amendment. Although the bill failed, it is highly significant in that it forced the wet and dry members to go on record as such, which aided the
Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform and other repeal organizations. This resulted in the drys being voted out of office and the eventual repeal of prohibition. Linthicum advocated for the United States to join the
Permanent Court of International Justice. In June 1917, John Charles Linthicum Jr., born John Charles Dillon, orphaned nephew of his wife who became their foster son, died while a student boarding at
Tome School. In 1918, Linthicum was motivated by his wife Helen a noted "club woman" and by Mrs. Reuben Ross Holloway, to become the first to introduce a bill which would make the
Star Spangled Banner the official
national anthem of the United States, though it was not made so until 1931. During the Seventy-second Congress, he served as chairman of the
U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs, and had been renominated to the Seventy-third Congress at the time of his death. While serving as chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Linthicum co-sponsored the Moses-Linthicum Act, achieved the "scheduling" of the foreign service and instituted the policy of U.S. government ownership of its embassies. Linthicum had also served as a delegate to the
Democratic National Convention in 1924. ==Legacy==