[1] It is frequently incorrectly stated (including in the cited article) that he was an 'only child' when in fact he had two brothers who died young, and a sister Margaret Cullinane, who lived to be 93, and was buried with Murphy in Glasnevin.

When the Irish Parliamentary Party split in 1890 over Charles Stewart Parnell's leadership, Murphy sided with the majority Anti-Parnellites.

In 1905 he re-launched this as a cheap mass-circulation newspaper, the Irish Independent, which rapidly displaced the Freeman's Journal as Ireland's most popular nationalist paper.

He refused a knighthood from King Edward VII in 1907 after organising a controversial International Exhibition in Herbert Park, Dublin (it was opposed by many nationalists who considered it as cosmopolitan and as encouraging the purchase of imported goods).

[citation needed] After the 1916 Easter Rising, he bought ruined buildings in Abbey Street as sites for his newspaper offices.

He was invited in 1917 to take part in talks during the Irish Convention which was called to agree terms for the implementation of the suspended 1914 Home Rule Act.

[4] However he discovered that John Redmond was negotiating agreeable terms with Unionists under the Midleton Plan to avoid the partition of Ireland but at the partial loss of full Irish fiscal autonomy.

[7] However, the Convention remained inconclusive, and the ensuing demise of the Irish party resulted in the rise of Sinn Féin, whose separatist policies Murphy also did not agree with.