Joseph Graham Campbell

Joseph Graham Campbell (Cookstown, May 1830 - London, 2 January 1891) was an Irish-born British chess player and chess composer.

Biography 
He moved to London in his twenties, where he was a frequent visitor to Kling's Chess and Coffee Rooms in New Oxford Street, a club founded by Josef Kling. At "Kling's Café" he took on several challenges with some of the strongest players of his time: Harrwitz , Brien , Wormald and Falkbeer , and always emerged victorious .

In 1860, he played a seven-game match with Barnes, and when the score was 6 to 1 in Barnes' favour, he managed to make up the deficit by winning the match 7 to 6.

In 1861, he played two friendly matches with Adolf Anderssen at Johann Löwenthal's house, winning one and drawing the other. When Morphy visited England in 1858, some of Campbell's friends tried to organise a match with the American champion, but due to various circumstances the match never took place. 

Joseph Campbell was also a gifted problematist . The problematist Frank Healey , his contemporary, considered him "a composer of genius of rare depth and originality" and "a player of great talent, with the deserved reputation of being superior to none of his contemporaries." 

He composed around 50 chess problems in three or more moves. According to Giorgio Porreca , a great connoisseur of these problems, "some of his works were at least half a century ahead of his time". 

He took part in competitions organised by The Era magazine (London 1856), the Manchester Chess Club (1857) and the British Chess Problem Association (London 1862).

In the London competition of 1862, which was organised by the British Chess Problem Society and combined with the major London tournament of the same year (won by Anderssen ahead of Paulsen, Owen, MacDonnell, Dubois and Steinitz), each participant had to submit six problems. Campbell emerged as the winner ahead of Konrad Bayer and Josef Plachutta and collected the first prize of £20. Subsequently, the jury, chaired by GW Medley, discovered a mistake in one of Campbell's tasks (a mate in 5 moves) and disqualified him from the ranking and asked him to repay the amount he had received. Campbell refused to return the prize in a letter dated 31 December 1862, citing "principled" reasons. The steering committee was unsure what to do for a long time, but finally decided not to insist on the return of the prize, as it believed it would not be able to win a possible legal dispute.