The American politician Charles Francis Murphy (1858-1924) was a Democratic boss who controlled Tammany Hall in New York City from 1902 to 1924.

Charles Francis Murphy, the son of Irish immigrants, was born on June 20, 1858, in New York City and raised there. He quit school at the age of 14 and held a succession of unskilled jobs. Hardworking and frugal, he saved enough money by 1880 to buy a small saloon. He made "Charlie's Place" into a popular hangout and the base of his political power in the rough East Side tenement region known as the Gas House District. In the early 1880s Murphy opened three more saloons and aligned himself with Tammany Hall in city politics.

A shrewd judge of men, a good listener, and a charitable, churchgoing Catholic, Murphy was elected Democratic leader of the Gas House District in 1892. Five years later the mayor appointed him dock commissioner, the only...