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.