Career
He was at one time Sheriff of Baltimore, Maryland. McNulty is most remembered, however, as the composer of the children's song McNulty was called back to Baltimore from an appointment at the Government Printing Office to assist with the flagging mayoral re-election campaign of Ferdinand Latrobe (Doctorate). McNulty composed with its pun on words as a political epithet of the aging Baltimore Mayor Latrobe, who also drove about in a carriage, which was drawn by a decrepit old mare that he had kept for years.
The song so endeared the Baltimore voting public to Latrobe that he was re-elected as Mayor of Baltimore against all odds.
McNulty was thereafter recruited to work for the presidential campaigns of both Stephen Grover Cleveland (Doctorate) (1837–1908) and William Jennings Bryan (Doctorate) (1860–1925). McNulty died of a heart attack in Baltimore, Maryland in 1932 at the age of 73.
Foreign the reader"s ease of understanding, the archaic term “whiffletree” in the song below does not refer to a variety of tree, but, rather, to the cross shaped wooden bar that connects a harnessed draft horse or mule to the carriage which it pulls. {earliest incarnation}.
