Charles Warren

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Charles Warren : biography

7 February 1840 – 21 January 1927

Jack the Ripper

Warren’s biggest difficulty was the Jack the Ripper case. He was probably unfairly blamed for the failure to track down the killer and faced press accusations that were frequently baseless. He was accused of failing to offer a reward for information, although in fact he supported the idea and it was blocked by the Home Office. He was accused of not putting enough police officers on the ground, whereas in fact Whitechapel was swamped with them. He was accused of being more interested in uniformed policing than detective work, which was true, but failed to take into consideration the fact that he allowed his experienced detective officers to conduct their own affairs and rarely interfered in their operations. He was accused of not using bloodhounds, and when he did eventually bring them in he was accused of being obsessed with them.

He responded to these criticisms by attacking his detractors in the pages of Murray’s Magazine, supporting vigilante activity, which the police on the streets knew was a bad idea, and publicly complaining about his lack of control of CID, which brought an official Home Office reprimand for discussing his office publicly without permission. Warren finally had enough and resigned-coincidentally right before the murder of Mary Jane Kelly on 9 November 1888. Every superintendent on the force visited him at home to express their regret. Warren’s resignation hindered the investigation. He had given an order that if another murder occurred, nobody was to enter the scene – a strange turn of phrase as the four previous victims had all been found in the open street – until he arrived to direct the investigation. Consequently, when the murder of Kelly was discovered by a rent collector who looked in through the window of her room in a Spitalfields lodging house, the police did not enter the room for some three hours because, unaware of his resignation, they were waiting for Warren to arrive. He returned to military duties.

He was appointed Knight Commander of the Bath (KCB) on 7 January 1888.

Retirement years

From 1908, Warren became involved with Baden-Powell in the creation of the Boy Scout movement. He had previously authored several books on Biblical archaeology, particularly Jerusalem, and also wrote "On Veldt in the Seventies", and "The Ancient Cubit and Our Weights and Measures". He died of pneumonia, brought on by a bout of influenza, at his home in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, was given a military funeral in Canterbury, and was buried in the churchyard at Westbere, Kent, next to his wife.

Footnotes

Fictional portrayals

Warren was played by Basil Henson in the 1973 miniseries Jack the Ripper. He was played by Anthony Quayle in the 1979 film Murder by Decree, which features the characters of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson in a dramatization of a conspiracy theory concerning the Ripper case. In the 1988 made for TV mini-series Jack the Ripper, which followed the same conspiracy theory as Murder by Decree, he was played by Hugh Fraser. The mini-series shows his final act as commissioner ordering lead detective Fred Abberline to suppress his findings on the investigation in order to protect the royal family from scandal. In the 2001 film From Hell he was played by Ian Richardson.

Education and early military career

Warren was born in Bangor, Gwynedd, Wales, the son of Major-General Sir Charles Warren. He was educated at Bridgnorth Grammar School and Wem Grammar School in Shropshire. He also attended Cheltenham College for one term in 1854, from which he went to the Royal Military College, Sandhurst and then the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich (1855–1857). On 27 December 1857, he was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the Royal Engineers. On 1 September 1864, he married Fanny Margaretta Haydon (died 1919); they had two sons and two daughters. Warren was a devout Anglican and an enthusiastic Freemason, becoming the third District Grand Master of the Eastern Archipelago in Singapore and the founding Master of the Quatuor Coronati Lodge.