CHAPTER XXXI
CHARLES F. MURPHY’S AUTOCRACY
1902-1903
Charles Francis Murphy, supreme leader of the Tammany organization from 1902 to this present writing, was born in New York City on June 20, 1858. He was a son of Dennis Murphy, an Irishman whose eight children all were born in the same district in New York City, and all of whom obtained the rudiments at least of a public school education. Dennis Murphy, it may be here said, lived to the remarkably hale age of eighty-eight years, dying in 1902.
As a youth, “Charlie” Murphy worked in an East Side shipyard, by no means a genteel schooling for a boy, although affording a forceful kind of experience of much value in his later career. Having to fight his way among rough youths, he developed both physical prowess and a sort of domineering ascendency which gave him marked leadership qualities among the virile youths overrunning what was then a district noted for its gangs. It was a section of the city filled with vacant lots and was long called the “Gas House District”; here it was that the notorious “Gas House Gang” achieved local reputation.
Tradition has it that when a very young man “Charlie” Murphy organized the Sylvan Social Club, a species of Tammany Hall juvenile auxiliary, composed of boys and youths ranging from fifteen to twenty years of age of whom he became the recognized leader. Later, through political influence, he obtained a job as driver on a cross-town horse car line. In his later career his enemies invidiously related how jobs of that kind were much coveted at the time because of the fact that as there were no bell punches or car fare registers, the conductors could easily help themselves to a proportion of the fares and divide with the drivers. True, this practise was prevalent, but the implication thus cast upon Mr. Murphy has been simply a gratuitous one, lacking even the elements of proof; it can therefore be dismissed from consideration.
He was a manly youth noted for his filial care, a solicitous son, turning in most of his earnings to his mother; he was, in fact, the main support of the family. At the same time he put by enough money—said to have been $500—to establish himself in the saloon business.
In 1879 he became owner of a diminutive saloon on Nineteenth street, east of Avenue A. Four years later, he opened another saloon, larger and better equipped than the first, at the corner of Twenty-third street and Avenue A. He was already a pushful, resourceful Tammany worker in his district, in which he was a district captain. Of the underground methods and diversified influences of district politics he had a good knowledge, and no less so the application of campaign funds in the most effective ways for producing votes. Shortly before 1886, Mr. Murphy opened another saloon, this time at Nineteenth street and First avenue. Subsequently he opened still another saloon at Twentieth street and Second avenue, which was the headquarters of the Anawanda Club, the Tammany district organization. Selling out the original saloon in which he had started business, he now opened a saloon at the northwest corner of First avenue and Twenty-third street. By 1890 he was the owner of four prosperous saloons. It was said of him that he never tolerated a woman in his saloons, although all of his saloons were situated in a district where the admission of women was a commonplace.
In 1892, at the age of thirty-two years, he was chosen Tammany leader of the “Gas-House” district. He was popular with the generality of people there; however reserved was his talk, he was always credited with being generous with his cash; no poor person was turned away empty-handed. It was narrated of him that during the blizzard of 1888 the Tammany General Committee, at his prompting, voted $4,000 for the relief of the poor, and that a large part of it came from Mr. Murphy’s own pocket. Of the $4,000, the sum of $1,500 was given to the Rev. Dr. Rainsford’s mission for distribution. Such personal acts of human warmth (irrespective of motive) counted more with masses of voters than tons of formal polemics on civic virtue, nor did the recipients care as to what source the funds came from. Even Dr. Rainsford was so impressed that he was moved to say from the pulpit of St. George’s Church that if all the Tammany leaders were like the leader of the Eighteenth Assembly District (Mr. Murphy), Tammany would be an admirable organization.
As a district leader, Mr. Murphy carried on politics and saloons systematically as a combined business. One of his brothers had long been on the police force; another brother was an Alderman; still another brother became an Alderman and Councilman.