Charles Warren

Sir Charles Warren is mainly remembered as the Police Commissioner who failed to catch the notorious serial killer Jack the Ripper. For this, he has gone down in history as an incompetent leader. However, Sir Charles Warren's biographer, Kevin Shillington, argues that this black-and-white view fails to take in the complexity of Warren's life.¹

Indeed, during his early years, Charles Warren was given several prestigious awards for his services. He later managed to prevent violence against the Jews in London. Perhaps there is more to Sir Charles Warren than you might initially expect. Read on to find out more!

Sir Charles Warren Biography

Let's first take a look at the life of Sir Charles Warren.

Fig. 1 Photo portrait of Sir Charles Warren in his military uniform.

Early Life

Charles Warren was born in 1840 in Bangor, Wales. His father was Major-General Sir Charles Warren, who had risen to prominence in the East India Company. As a boy, Charles Warren received a good education. He attended two grammar schools, after which he began his military career at the Royal Military College in Sandhurst.

In 1864, Charles Warren married Fanny Haydon and had four children. During these years, Charles worked as a land surveyor for Gibraltar in the military's engineering wing.

Foreign Travels

In 1867, the Palestine Exploration Fund sent Charles Warren to Palestine to conduct archaeological expeditions. He helped to usher in a new phase of biblical archaeology when he analysed the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

After a brief period in the military in South Africa, Charles Warren returned to England in 1880 to become the Chief Instructor of Surveying at the School of Military Engineering. In 1882, the military sent him once again to Palestine to investigate what happened to an archaeological dig at Sinai. Charles Warren found that the archaeologists had been robbed and murdered. He discovered their remains, gave them a proper burial, and discovered the attackers. For this, he was made a Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George in 1883.

After this, Charles Warren was sent to Bechuanaland in Southern Africa to stop the Boers from stealing land and cattle from local African tribes. Charles Warren achieved this swiftly and without any bloodshed. He was rewarded by becoming a Knight of the Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George in 1885.

Police Commissioner

Although Charles Warren was unsuccessful in his bid to become an MP, he was appointed Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis in 1886. However, this was when his reputation started to go downhill. His unpopularity in the press began on Bloody Sunday when Charles Warren mishandled a public protest in Trafalgar Square.

Charles Warren's reputation was further harmed when he failed to catch the notorious Whitechapel serial killer, Jack the Ripper. He eventually became wearied by the constant criticisms of his incompetence in the press and resigned.

Final Years

In 1889, Charles Warren was sent to command the garrison at Singapore, where he was promoted to Major-General.

However, when he was sent to command the 5^th Division of the Field Force in 1899 during the Boer War, Warren's career again suffered a humiliating defeat. In particular, he mishandled the Battle of Spion Kop in 1900, which led to a military disaster that could have been easily averted. He was recalled to Britain afterward.

In his retirement, Charles Warren became a leading member of the newly founded Boy Scouts movement. He died of pneumonia in 1927 and was given a military funeral in Canterbury.

Sir Charles Warren Jack the Ripper

Perhaps Sir Charles Warren is most famous for his inability to catch the serial killer Jack the Ripper.

Charles Warren organised a large-scale police and detective operation to catch the mysterious killer. The investigation saw more than 2000 people interviewed, 300 investigated, and 80 detained. Despite this, the analyses revealed nothing, and the police failed to discover anything about the murderer.

As a result, the press mocked Charles Warren and the police for failing to catch Jack the Ripper. Due to his mishandling of Bloody Sunday, Charles Warren was already an unpopular figure. Now the left-wing press had a new cause to criticise him - accusing Warren of ineptness and the police of incompetence.

Fig. 3 'Blind Man's Bluff' - A Punch cartoon by John Tenniel in September 1888 criticising the incompetence of the police in their failure to catch Jack the Ripper.

Warren resigned from his post as Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis due to his exasperation with constant criticism in the press.

Sir Charles Warren Whitechapel Graffiti

In September 1888, Jack the Ripper committed a double murder in Whitechapel. He left behind a set of graffiti on the wall at the crime scene, which became known as the Goulston Street Graffito. The text read:

Here Warren made a highly irregular decision. He ordered that the graffiti be washed off the wall, removing the evidence, before the police photographer could arrive to take the scenes of the crime.

In his report following the event, Warren justified his decision by explaining that there was already strong anti-Semitic sentiment in London. He argued that leaving this graffiti on the wall for everybody to see might unleash a pogrom against the Jews in London. Charles Warren argued that preventing such an attack from taking place was more important than leaving the scene of the crime undisturbed.

In making this decision, Charles Warren likely prevented anti-Semitic violence from taking place as revenge for the murders.

Charles Warren Police Commissioner

Charles Warren was Police Commissioner from 1886 to 1888. Although Warren's officers liked him, most of London's constables found him a difficult manager to get on with, partially because of his aloof manner. However, Charles Warren worked hard to improve the working conditions for the police, including improving the quality of their boots (since they walked many kilometres in a day).

Fig. 4 Cartoon of Sir Charles Warren that was published in Vanity Fair in February 1886, the year that Warren became Police Commissioner.

One of Warren's persistent problems as Police Commissioner, besides poor representation in the press, was his complex relationship with the Home Secretary, Henry Matthews.

These two men were political opposites. Warren was a Liberal and even reasonably radical in his outlook for the time, whereas Henry Matthews was a staunch Conservative. The two of them clashed constantly. Many of the decisions that Warren ended up being criticised for in the press were decisions that Matthews had made, which Warren was unable to overrule.

Charles Warren Army

The following table shows Warren's various awards Warren throughout his military years. Most of them were awarded before he became Police Commissioner in 1886.

Battle of Scion Kop

Besides failing to catch Jack the Ripper, Warren's other major failure was his leadership of the Battle of Scion Kop in January 1900 during the Boer War.

• The Boer War was a colonial war fought between the British and the Boers (descendants of the Dutch who had emigrated to South Africa) between 1899 and 1902.
• The British wanted to expand their colonial territories in Africa by taking over the land of the Boers.
• The Boers wanted to maintain their independence.
• In the end, Britain won, but it was a long and brutal war.

Scion Kop was the tallest hill in the region. Warren sent his force to climb it at night in a dense mist, resulting in them getting lost and only ascending to a lower summit rather than the peak. This left the British in a worse position than the Boers, who held the high ground. The British artillery could not destroy the Boer guns, which killed many British officers. Instead of calling for reinforcements and firing on a key Boer target, Warren decided to just continue with his original plan.

The next day, the British decided to retreat, exhausted and running out of water, even though they had nearly taken the hill.

The British suffered 243 casualties, and over 1250 men were wounded or captured by the Boers. It was such an unmitigated disaster for the army of the largest Empire in the world to be defeated by a small, untrained guerrilla force that the British government recalled Warren to Britain. It was decided that he was inept as a military commander.