Jabez Wright

Jabez Wright was born at Greenwich England in 1852. He was employed as an apprentice carpenter and joiner when he ran away to sea at the age of nineteen. He became the first Labor mayor in the world when he was elected Mayor of Broken Hill in 1900.

In 1877, Wright migrated to Adelaide in South Australia where he became a radical unionist and political activist. He arrived in Broken Hill with his wife and four children in 1888. He was an undertaker in Broken Hill from 1888 – 1914.

One of Jabez Wright’s first achievements in Broken Hill was to help found the Daily Truth, a union-run daily newspaper that is still operating today and remains locally owned.

Jabez was President of the Barrier District Assembly, a member of the Barrier Labor Federation, and chairman of the Trades Hall Trust. Soon after representing Broken Hill as an Alderman at the annual Labor Conference, Wright was elected Mayor. This was an historic win for Labor locally, nationally, and internationally.

Mayor Jabez Wright became a hero of local unionism and proved his talent as an entrepreneur as well as a politician. He invested in the city’s infrastructure and the tramway system and the public baths were built during his term. In 1913, Wright was elected as a representative to State Parliament, and after the tragic death of another Labor hero, Percy Brookfield in 1921, Jabez Wright became a member for Sturt in the House of Representatives.

He held this seat until the end of his career in 1922, when he died suddenly and unexpectedly at Bondi in Sydney. Jabez Wright was known to be short-tempered, sharp-witted, and a passionate defender of the workers right to reasonable hours and a fair wage and on hearing of his death, the secretary of the Parliamentary Labor Party said of Jabez: ‘Rough he undoubtedly was in many ways, but he was generous and straight to the core.’

Audio transcript available.