Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 03.djvu/211

 Barker farmers and manufacturers. Here his father was employed in the woollen manufacture; and here in early life Joseph, who was the fourth son of a family of eleven, was engaged as a wool-spinner. His childhood was one of great privation and suffering; and his desultory education was obtained chiefly at the Sunday school. His parents were Wesleyans, and he was enrolled a member of the same community, in which he soon became an occasional preacher, and was ‘put upon the plan’ as a home missionary and exhorter, and, after about three years of probation and trial, as a local preacher. The improved circumstances of his father now allowed him to be sent to ‘a noted methodist school’ at Leeds, kept by Mr. James Sigston. Forsaking the Wesleyan communion, he joined the ministry of the Methodist New Connexion. In this body he officiated for a year, 1828–9, as assistant to the superintendent of the Liverpool circuit, which he left with a recommendation to ‘go out as a travelling preacher on trial.’ Barker was appointed successively to the Hanley circuit 1829–30; to the Halifax circuit 1830–1, during his stay in which, contrary to the rule affecting preachers of his standing, he married a Miss Salt, of Betley, in Staffordshire, and was in consequence sentenced by the next conference to lose a year of his probation; to Blyth, in the Newcastle-on-Tyne circuit, 1831–2, a disciplinary migration; and to the Sunderland circuit for six months, 1832–3, with residence at Durham. His remarkable fluency and general ability in the pulpit had speedily obtained for him great popularity. Though accused of heretical views, he was in 1833 admitted into ‘full connexion,’ and appointed, by an innovation, the ‘third married preacher at Sheffield,’ 1833–5. While stationed at Sheffield and afterwards in the Chester circuit, 1835–7, Barker strongly advocated teetotalism. From 1837 to 1840 he conducted a weekly periodical called ‘The Evangelical Reformer.’ At the conference of 1839 he was removed from Mossley to Gateshead, a comparatively new circuit, and there denounced Socialism.

From the Methodist New Connexion, Barker was expelled at the conference which met at Halifax in 1841, on the ground that he ‘had denied the divine appointment of baptism, and refused to administer the ordinance.’ After his expulsion, which was followed by a loss to the connexion of ‘29 societies and 4,348 members’ (, Digest, &c., p. 113), Barker became the pastor of a church in Newcastle-on-Tyne, which had, like himself, left the Methodist New Connexion. Here it was Barker's daily custom to deliver lectures, followed by free discussions. He turned printer, and in addition to other publications began to issue a periodical called ‘The Christian,’ whilst his adherents were known as Barkerites. At this period he held a ten nights' discussion with the Rev. William (afterwards Dr.) Cooke, ‘the ablest minister,’ Barker says, ‘in the body to which I myself had formerly belonged.’ Barker, whose views were constantly changing, for a time inclined to quakerism, and afterwards to unitarianism. In 1845 he preached in unitarian chapels both in London and elsewhere. The unitarians enabled him to start a printing establishment on a larger scale at Wortley, a suburb of Leeds, where, on 6 July 1846, a steam printing-press, which had been provided at a cost of some 600l., was publicly presented to him by Dr. (afterwards Sir John) Bowring. Some months previously Barker had issued a ‘Proposal for a new library of three hundred volumes, the cheapest collection of works ever published.’ To this task he now applied himself with much energy, and issued week by week a series of books, theological, philosophical, ethical, and otherwise, under the title of the ‘Barker Library.’ The price of these works was so small that ‘their printer and publisher may be regarded as the pioneer and first originator of cheap literature in this country.’ Here also he published anonymously an autobiographical work entitled ‘The History and Confessions of a Man, as put forth by himself,’ 8vo, Wortley, 1846; which was substantially reproduced in ‘Barker's Review,’ 1861–3, as ‘The Life of a Man,’ and in the posthumously published ‘Life of Joseph Barker, written by himself,’ 8vo, London, 1880. In 1846 Barker ‘began,’ he says, to ‘dabble in politics,’ advocating republicanism for England, repeal for Ireland, which he had visited in June and July 1845, and the nationalisation of the land. He commenced a weekly periodical called ‘The People,’ to propagate his extreme opinions, which reached a circulation of more than 20,000 weekly. In 1847—in the course of which year he made a six months' tour in America—he foretold, in his ‘Companion to the Almanac,’ the French revolution of 1848. Barker threw himself into the chartist agitation which followed, as the advocate of ‘peaceful legal measures.’ After the summer assizes in 1848, the judge at Liverpool issued bench warrants for the arrest of a number of political agitators, including Barker. He was arrested about six weeks later, and taken to the city gaol at Manchester. He was detained until four o'clock on the succeeding day, when the magistrates