Son of a John Murphy, a post office porter, and his wife Johanna Jeffers, a tailoress, Cornelius James Murphy was born into relative poverty at 150 Blackwall Buildings on 11 June 1894. In spite of his under-privileged early childhood, he became a highly-regarded Reuters journalist and foreign correspondent who was witness to and reported on some of the most momentous occasions of the 20th. century.

The following obituary for C.J. Murphy appeared in the Journal of the The Institute of Journalists in 1960:

“Mr.Cornelius James Murphy, noted over many years for his distinguished handling of Continental assignments in Reuter’s foreign news service, died recently in his early sixties at his London home. He had been a member of the Institute since 1929.

Educated in Belgium and Switzerland, Mr. Murphy was an accomplished linguist and, with his studies interrupted by the outbreak of the First World War, served with the British Military Intelligence in France and Italy, and also became a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps.

He joined Reuter’s in 1919, worked with them until 1936, first as a sub-editor on the Overseas Desk, and then as night chief sub-editor. During this home-based period he carried out a number of special journalistic missions abroad, including the Gialdini trial in Milan in 1933; the hazardous 1936 flight of the airship “Hindenburg” to America; and frontier reporting of the Spanish civil war the same year.

In September 1936 he went to Paris as Reuter’s chief correspondent and in October, 1938, he was transferred to Rome as chief Reuter man there for the critical events leading up to Mussolini’s break with this country and France. After the Fascist declaration of war in the summer of 1940, Mr. Murphy left Italy in an Anglo-Italian exchange of their respective London-Rome foreign correspondents; and after a short assignment with the Atlantic Fleet, he took over Reuter’s office in Lisbon. But in 1941 he left his long association with Reuter’s to engage in a journalistic-cum-special service mission in South America, on completion of which he served with the Intelligence Corps in the West of England.

On creation of the Brussels Treaty Organisation, Mr. Murphy was appointed their P.R.O., but left when work was confined to Cultural relations, and afterwards became P.R.O. to British-South American Airways, taking part in the first “week-end” south trans-atlantic flight. After a spell as leader-writer on foreign affairs at Kemsley House, Mr.Murphy switched to Australian news services and at the time of his death was still in harness, working with his perennial youthful verve at the London headquarters of the Australian Broadcasting Commission.”