Australian Dictionary of Biography

George Read Murphy (1856-1925), public servant, inventor and writer, was born on 17 May 1856 at Prahran, Melbourne, eldest son of Henry Morgan Murphy, merchant, and his wife Edith, née Read. His Dublin-born father was a member of the Victorian Legislative Council in 1864-73. After attending Melbourne Church of England Grammar School, Murphy was appointed to the Victorian Public Service as a clerk of courts on 5 January 1874, the youngest officer ever given charge of a court. His public service career extended over forty years and embraced a variety of duties in seventeen country and suburban localities. He was at times clerk of courts, coroner and police magistrate.

But Murphy's public service career, distinguished as it was, seemed to be merely a source of financial security which allowed him to pursue a busy intellectual life. From his youth he wrote verse and prose and letters to editors on a wide range of social issues. When a serious coach accident in 1886 necessitated his taking extended sick leave from the public service, he went to London and immersed himself in the issues of the day. He studied the torpedo, invented some twenty years earlier, and patented the 'Victoria' torpedo, which was commended in The Times. A company purchased the rights to manufacture for £500 a year but failed to sell them to the Royal Navy because of the expense involved in changing from the existing systems. He lectured to the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1890 on torpedoes.

While in London Murphy wrote his first novel, The Blakely Tragedy (1891), which was in reality a plea for legislation to banish prostitutes from the streets. Returning to Victoria to resume his legal duties at Geelong, he published Beyond the Ice (London, 1894). The subtitle suggests an adventure story about a trip to a newly discovered region near the North Pole; it is in fact a Utopian novel, showing how Australia (Zara), America (Ura), England (Gurla) and the civilized dependencies (Roda) might attain a state of universal happiness in a socialist society guided by the philosophy of Christ. In 1894 he also published at Geelong his History of Federation, a fictitious presentation in dialogue form. He also lectured and wrote on prison and racing reform, socialism and reform of the petty sessions, and he was largely responsible for bringing about the royal commission on law reform in 1897.

Murphy retired as police magistrate at Ballarat in 1916. He had married Ellen Stock at Sandford, Victoria, on 3 November 1904; they had no children. He lived in retirement in Melbourne and published his last book, Peace, in 1920. He died of pneumonia in Sydney on 11 September 1925 and was buried with Anglican rites in Northern Suburbs cemetery. His wife survived him.