Sir Charles Warren

Warren’s wonderfully groomed moustache had served him well in the years previous to his appointment as Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis in 1886, accompanying him in the tunnels under Jerusalem, during the 1877 Transkei War in Africa, and his investigations into the disappearance of Professor Edward Henry Palmer’s archaeological expedition in the Sinai in 1880.

His time as Commissioner was to prove its greatest challenge, however. The Metropolitan Police had degenerated into a sad state under the watch of Sir Edmund Henderson, which didn’t endear it to a city who, since its inception, seemed to loathe its existence purely on principle. For example, officers were required to wear there uniforms at all times, even when at home, for fear that they would act as agent provocateurs if allowed to wear plain clothes. In 1829 an officer by the name of Joseph Granthem was beaten and killed while trying to interrupt a fight between two drunks. His death was ruled a “justifiable homicide” by the jury at the inquest.

Warren would try to improve the force but he would be hampered by constant battles with the Henry Mathews, Secretary of the Home Office throughout his tenure. He would also prove to be quite unpopular with much of the press at the time, and the events in Trafalgar Square on November 13, 1887, known as Bloody Sunday, would turn them against him permanently. It was, to say the least, an uphill battle.

If Bloody Sunday didn’t cement Warren’s place in the history of London then a series of murders in the district known as Whitechapel, by a fiend who would come to be known as Jack the Ripper, beginning on August 31, 1888 would do it instead. The first victim, Mary Anne Nichols, a prostitute, was found in front of a gated stable entrance in Buck’s Row. The second victim, Annie Chapman — born Eliza Ann Smith, also a prostitute — was found on this date in 1888, a Saturday, near a doorway in the back yard of 29 Hanbury Street, Spitalfields. Three more women would be slain before his spree ended in November and neither Sir Charles Warren, nor his elegant moustache, would be able to bring the Ripper to justice.