SOUTH EASTERN
GAZETTE SEPTEMBER 2, 1930
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A VETERAN CHIEF
MAGISTRATE
MR. J. BARKER'S EIGHTY-NINTH BIRTHDAY
TWICE MAYOR OF MAIDSTONE
On Thursday last Mr Joseph Barker,
JP, of Hill House, Loose, Chairman of Bearsted Petty Sessions,
celebrated his eighty-ninth birthday, and thus has entered upon
his ninetieth year. The happy event was anticipated in a felicitous
reference by Mr W H Whitehead, Clerk to the Bearsted Court, on
the previous Monday at the close of the business for the day.
Mr Joseph Barker is probably the
senior presiding magistrate in the whole of Kent and has set
up a record with his twenty years' service as Chairman of the
Bearsted Bench, a position in which he followed the late Sir
Charles Whitehead, father of the present Clerk to the Court,
in July, 1910. He has been a County magistrate in the Bearsted
Division for the past thirty-five years, being first appointed
to the Commission of the Peace on April 10th, 1895. He is also
one of the senior Magistrates for Maidstone, with another record
of thirty years' service on the Borough Bench.
Mr Joseph Barker, like his more famous brother, the late Sir John Barker, of Kensington, is
a native of Loose, and in early life was engaged in the brewing
business, eventually succeeding to the brewery founded by his
father. The brewery was later sold out of the family and is not
now in existence.
TWICE MAYOR OF MAIDSTONE
A life-long Liberal, for many years
Mr Joseph Barker was closely identified with the municipal and
political life of Maidstone. Our records show that he was first
elected to the Town Council in 1884, defeating the late Mr C
Pell in the Stone Street Ward at the November election. It is
interesting to recall that the voting on that occasion was: Barker
(L) 439; Pell (C) 351. Re-elected in the Jubilee year, 1887,
when he defeated the present Alderman F G Laurence, Mr Barker
continued to hold his seat unopposed a the November elections
in 1890 and 1893. In 1895 he was elected Mayor of Maidstone and
two years later again served the Mayoral office. On November
9th, 1898 Mr Barker was made an Alderman, his contemporaries
also elected on that occasion being the late Alderman Charles
Ellis (L). One of the retiring Aldermen not then re-elected was
the late Mr Alfred Spencer. Mr Barker continued to hold his Aldernamic
seat until his retirement from municipal office in 1904.
Another record to which Mr Barker
can lay claim is that he is the oldest customer of the Maidstone
branch of the Westminster Bank, his name having been on the books
for some 30 years. He is, too, the senior surviving member of
the Maidstone Club, in Earl Street, and for the past 35 years
he has been Chairman of Messrs. Wm. Hobbs and Son Ltd., Lower
Stone Street. For twenty years he has been a member of the Kent
Discharged Prisoners Aid Society.
Nowhere is Mr Barker more revered
than in his native village. He has been a member of the Loose
Parish Council almost continuously since its formation and has
repeatedly held the office of Chairman. As a special compliment
to him for his long service the Council again elected him Chairman
this Spring. The record of his long and valued service would
not be complete without a reference to the fact that for forty
years he was a member of the Maidstone Board of Guardians, a
work in which he took a great interest.
Mr Barker spent his eighty-ninth
birthday quietly surrounded by members of his family, at Hill
House, Loose, where he resides with his daughter, Mrs Gould.
It was in the beautiful garden there on a recent morning that
he chatted over events of his long life with a representative
of the "South Eastern Gazette", with a power of recollection
that belied his great years.
MAIDSTONE'S BITTER YEAR
Recalling the days when he was
Mayor of Maidstone, Mr Barker referred particularly to the year
of the great typhoid epidemic in 1897, a bitter year, as he said,
for the borough. He spoke with pardonable pride of the fact that
he raised by public appeal some £30,000 for the relief
of the stricken people of Maidstone. Tunbridge Wells alone sent
him a thousand guineas.
"To restore confidence in the borough
after the epidemic," he said, "I invited the Lord Mayor
of London (Sir Horatio Davis, of Wateringbury Place) and the
Sheriffs of the City to visit Maidstone. The Lord Mayor, a close
personal friend of mine, whom I often visited at the Mansion
House, came down with the Sheriffs. I entertained them to a banquet
in the Corn Exchange and a reception at the Brenchley Gardens,
and invited the inhabitants of the borough to meet them".
"Things were pretty bad in
Maidstone at that time," Mr Barker recalled, "people
were afraid to come to the town. To give you an idea of how scared
people were: When I got into the train at St Paul's Station on
one occasion and happened to mention that I was the Mayor of
Maidstone, the carriage was very soon empty. I did all I could
to restore public confidence in the borough and through the whole
period of the epidemic kept my family at school in Maidstone.
My daughter, Mrs Rivers Loe, was the Mayoress that year, and
she worked very hard in the typhoid epidemic."
CRIME AND MERCY
Mr Barker is proud of his position
as Chairman of Bearsted Petty Sessions, in a Police Division
which has a wonderful record for public sobriety. "Since
I have been Chairman," he said "I don't think there
have been twenty cases of drunkenness before the Court."
Invited to express his view as
Chairman of Justices, as to whether he has observed any diminution
in the amount of crime in the past thirty-five years, his response
was not so satisfactory. "No", was the emphatic answer
"There is as much crime now as when I first went on the
Bench. We are much more merciful and let offenders off more easily.
I asked a man once who came before me whether he was guilty.
He replied "Yes, guilty under the First Offenders Act". |
BARKER