JABEZ WRIGHT One hundred years ago the Labor Mayor of Broken Hill, Jabez Wright, replied to an invitation to attend the opening of the Commonwealth Parliament in Melbourne with a telegram: “I have better things to do than attend the National Drunk.” As the nation’s political leaders and their indispensable staff flocked to Melbourne yesterday to celebrate the 100th anniversary of that first sitting of Parliament, we thought it timely to give our readers a little history of the man who had “better things to do” – the first Labor Mayor in the world.   Jabez Wright was born in Greenwich, England on April 25, 1852.                            The  son of carpenter Jakey Gladstone Wright and his wife Mary Ann.   At 19 while still an apprenticed carpenter he "ran away" to Canada. He  was in Chicago at the time of the Great Fire and travelled through North and South America.      He returned to England but in May, 1877 left London as a paying passenger on the ship "Eaton Hall".  The voyage took three months and he arrived in Adelaide in August. He married Honora Kearney – who came   from County Ireland  -   in Gladstone, SA on January 15,1878. They had three sons and a daughter.  Later they moved to Petersburg (changed to Peterborough during World War One because of the German connotations of the original name). The family moved to Broken Hill in 1888, attracted by the opportunities to be had in the booming mining town. He worked as a cabinet maker and also as an undertaker  and embalmer, advertising under the slogan: “Others come and go, but I go on forever.”  No doubt he prepared many a dead miner for burial. The unsafe Broken Hill Proprietary mines produced many terrible accidents and perhaps these events helped inspired him to campaign for safer conditions. He became the first Labor Alderman in 1896 and the world’s first Labour Mayor in 1900. Jabez Wright was a member of the Australian Worker’s Union, the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners, a life member of the Amalgamated Miners, the president of the Barrier Labour Federation and a trustee of the Socialist League. In NSW parliament he was a member of the Legislative Assembly for Willyama from 1913 to 1920 and Sturt 1921 – 1922. In 1897 he helped start what became the Barrier Daily Truth, the first Labor daily in the English speaking world. He was responsible for obtaining steam trains for the 26,000 residents of Broken Hill who, before this, had no organised public transport, and he laid the foundation stone for the first public swimming baths (which had a special  day reserved for the ladies). Jabez Wright died at Bondi, Sydney in 1922 while still in office as a MLA.  He is buried at Waverley Cemetery.  His wife Honora died the following year.  Alice their daughter married James Henry Sampson, of 121 Garnet Street, Broken Hill, and she died in August 1953.  Sons Jakey and John Joseph lived in Adelaide but Richard’s movements are unknown. His obituary in the Sydney Morning Herald stated: “He will be very much missed from the house, on account of his terse methods of expression. “His character was one in which mingled with readiness of wit, geniality and ever present good humor.  He has been one of the Labor Stalwarts for years and he was well known in the Labor movement for half a century.  He attended nearly all the conferences from Broken Hill for many years.  He always fought very stronglyf or his principles and never faltered in his allegience to the Labor cause.” Mr Greig, the secretary of the Parliamentary Labor Party said: “I held him in the highest possible esteem.  Rough he undoubtedly was in many ways, but he was generous and straight to the core.”`

Jabez Wright first mayor of Broken Hill