William Murphy was a most contraversial figure in Britain in the late 1860s. An employee of the Protestant Electoral Union, he delivered a mixture of anti-Irish and anti-Catholic sermons to predominantly working class audiences in Birmingham and various other towns visited by his entourage.To fellow Protestants, Murphy was a public hero, defender of the faith, and a messenger of truth; to the Catholic population, especially the Irish, however, he was a rabble-rouser, a liar and an apostate.His outspoken sermons led to the anti-Irish Murphy Riots of June 1867, the most serious religious disorder of the entire Victorian period, which caused extensive harm to property and people, as well as to community relations.