Charles J. Dunphie of Commons. Charles Dunphie was educated at Trinity College, Dublin. Coming to London, he studied medicine at King's College Hospital, where he was a favourite pupil of Sir William Fergusson, but soon took to literature and journalism. For some years he was on "The Times" staff, and when the Crimean War broke out in 1853 he was offered the post of its special correspondent. But having lately married, he persuaded his colleague and countryman, William Howard Russell, to go in his stead. During the war, he was one of the founders of the "Patriotic Fund Journal" (1854-55), a weekly miscellany
William Howard Russell of steel...". Following Russell's reports of the appalling conditions suffered by the Allied troops conducting the siege, including an outbreak of cholera, Samuel Morton Peto and his partners built the Grand Crimean Central Railway, which was a major factor leading to the success of the siege. He spent December 1854 in Constantinople on holiday, returning in early 1855. Russell left Crimea in December 1855 to be replaced by the Constantinople correspondent of "The Times". In 1856 Russell was sent to Moscow to describe the coronation of Tsar Alexander II and in the following year was sent to India where he