From the Desk of the Editor...

thepittsburghhistoryjournal:

On This Day in Pittsburgh History: January 7, 1850 

Joseph Barker was elected mayor while serving a year’s term in jail for disturbing the peace. [Historic Pittsburgh] 

From Mike Mackin, Heinz History Center communications manager, in the Post-Gazette (2009): 

Joseph Barker, a write-in candidate for mayor in the 1850 election, had an outlaw reputation and a long list of run-ins with local police. Mr. Barker gained notoriety as an illiterate street preacher in the 1840s while accumulating a list of arrests for inciting riots, blocking streets and publicly using vulgar language.

Clean-shaven — at a time when nearly all men wore beards — and always dressed in a black cape and stovepipe hat, Mr. Barker often commanded a public following.

His most fervent supporters began convincing Pittsburghers that Mr. Barker was a martyr for freedom of speech and should be considered for mayor in the upcoming 1850 election. However, following one of his public tirades months before the election, then Pittsburgh Mayor John Herron had Mr. Barker arrested for obstructing traffic and using lewd language.

While on trial, Mr. Barker threatened the judge and members of the jury, who sentenced him to a 12-month jail term.

Undeterred, he earned nearly 1,800 write-in votes and won the mayoral election by 200 votes while sitting in a City of Pittsburgh jail cell.

Mayor Barker surprised many of his critics by enforcing a 10-hour workday for certain occupations and banning prize fights. However, he served only one year as mayor, and during his term, police arrested him twice for assault and battery. 

Barker was decapitated in a train accident in August 1862. More reading: 

“Joseph Barker had a knack for getting into trouble,” James W. Ross, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 1950

“1850 mayor just couldn’t stay out of jail,” Mike Cronin, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 2008 

Pittsburgh is its own strange world, and I love it.