Sir Charles Warren, Commissioner of The Metropolitan Police

Sir Charles Warren

The man who was Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in 1888 was born in Bangor, North Wales, in 1840.

Charles Warren was the son of Major-General Sir Charles Warren, who became a war hero after the Battle of Inkerman in 1854. In that same year, 14-year-old Charles entered the Royal Military College at Sandhurst.

From the age of 15, he attended the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich. In 1857, at the age of 17, he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Royal Engineers.

He established himself as a proficient surveyor. From 1861 to 1865, he worked surveying Gibraltar and, with support, created two scale models of Gibraltar. One of them is 26 feet or 8 metres long and survives in the Museum of Gibraltar.

On 1 September 1864, he married Fanny Margaretta Haydon with whom he had two sons and two daughters.

From 1865 to 1967, he was an instructor at the School of Military Engineering at Chatham, after which the Palestine Exploration Fund recruited him in 1867.

During his excavations in Jerusalem, he discovered a series of tunnels under the Temple Mount and a water shaft, which is now known as Warren’s Shaft.

He spent time in Africa, both surveying and commanding troops.

His military background certainly showed that he had a disciplined mind and energy, but he had little experience that would recommend him for the demands of police work.

However, at that time, senior officers in the police were selected generally from the military.

To be fair to Charles Warren, the job of Commissioner of the country's biggest police force could never be easy, and when Warren took over, it would have been seriously challenging for the best of candidates.

Sir Edmund Henderson resigned after 17 years in the post, and for several years, the best that can be said is that his heart was not in the job, so when Warren took control, police morale was not great.

Added to this, they were struggling to deal with a bombing campaign organised by those fighting for Irish independence. A bombing campaign which had intensified in 1884.

The difficulties for policing were made worse because Britain was still suffering the effects of ‘The Long Depression’, which began with a banking crisis that began with the ‘The Panic of 1873’. This meant unemployment was widespread, and living conditions for millions of people in London were appalling.

Then came the West End Riots.

On February 8th, 1886, 100,000 demonstrators marched through London. The Carlton Club, the Devonshire Club, the offices of the Pall Mall Gazette and several shops had their windows smashed.

The police's handling of the riot was questioned, and on February 22, 1886, Sir Edmund Henderson resigned.

At this point, Colonel Charles Warren replaced Henderson.

Events did not improve.

Since 1884 James Monroe had been in charge of the Criminal Investigation Department and covert operations against Irish Republicans. His title was Assistant Commissioner for Crime; however, he did not regard the Commissioner as his boss.

Charles Warren disagreed with Monroe’s view, and they clashed.

Then, within months of Warren becoming Commissioner, Henry Mathews became Home Secretary, and he sided with Munro.

At the same time, the press criticised the new Commissioner not just for his chosen dress uniform but also for his concerns about the quality of the beat police officers’s boots.

Given that the police officers were walking around 20 miles a day, Warren’s concerns about their footwear would seem justified.

Then in June 1887, one of his officers caused a sensation in the press.

Police Constable Bowden Endacott was one of the more successful Metropolitan Police Officers at arresting women on the accusation that they were soliciting.

According to the Clerk at the Old Bailey, Endacott often identified two or even three women a day.

On June 28 1887, he arrested 28-year-old Elizabeth Cass.

Her boss, Mrs Bowman, testified that Elizabeth Cass had been in London only a few months and had never before been out late at night. Further, she was a respectable woman in a good job.

The case was raised in Parliament, and Charles Warren was forced to hold an inquiry. Then on 19 July 1887, he issued an order that “a Police Constable should not assume that any particular woman is a common prostitute . . . unless she so describes herself.”

The following year Charles Warren wrote this sentence: “We have no means of ascertaining what women are prostitutes and who are not.”

This certainly shows that many of the arrests of women may well have been based on the officer’s assumptions rather than hard evidence. And the number of arrests of women on the grounds of prostitution fell dramatically after the events surrounding the arrest of Elizabeth Cass..

No sooner had press criticism reduced over the Cass case than a new crisis fell into Warren’s lap.

On Sunday 13 November 1887, 4000 police officers armed with truncheons, 300 mounted police officers, 300 Grenadier Guards and 300 Life Guards cleared a demonstration in Trafalgar Square.

‘Bloody Sunday’ turned the press against him just months before the Whitechapel Murders intensified the pressure on Charles Warren.

The brutal attacks on Annie Millwood, Emma Elizabeth Smith, Martha Tabram, Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly filled the newspapers in 1888.

The press blamed Warren for failing to offer a reward for information, accused him of not assigning sufficient investigators and favouring uniformed constables instead of detectives.

Warren wrote a response for Murray's Magazine for which the Home Office reprimanded him for revealing the workings of the police department and for writing an article without permission.

In the end, it was too much for Warren and on November 8 1888 he resigned.

He then resumed his military career before retiring. Sir Charles Warren died in Weston-super- Mare on 21 January 1927 at the age of 86.