SIR CHARLES WARREN GOES.
The Chief of the Metropolitan Police Too Free with His Pen.
FORCED TO RESIGN.
His Withdrawal Has No Connection with His Failure to Catch the "Ripper."
His Resignation not the Result of the East End Murders.
[BY THE COMMERCIAL CABLE TO THE HERALD.]
The Herald's European edition publishes to-day the following from the Herald's London Bureau, No. 391 Strand, dated November 12, 1888:--
Sir Charles Warren has copied Lord Sackville, and to-day, in consequence, shares his fate. John Murray invited the Commissioner to use his pen and he produced an article on the police in Murray's Magazine, defending himself. The matter came up in Parliament, and his superior, the Home Secretary, snubbed him, saying:--"Sir Charles was ignorant of a rule in the department that no attaché should write of his office without permission."
This was tantamount to stating that Sir Charles was inattentive, so he resigned. He and Lord Sackville will therefore soon meet and compare notes.
I called upon Sir Charles this evening in consequence. He is a handsome military man, looking little over forty and considerably bronzed. He wears a mustache suggestive of silence and his features are regular and handsome. Instead of the military martinet which he is represented to be in some quarters, I found a gentleman of courteous manner and amiable disposition, with much dignity. His manner had more of the suavity of the diplomatist than the rough and ready style of a military man.
"Can you give the Herald any details about your announced resignation?"
"Well, not much. You must understand that until the government has appointed some one in my place I can say little. However, there is one thing I wish to be understood; that is that Mr. Matthews is speaking for the government, but he is not doing so for me. I, the Commissioner, will, when the time comes, have my say. At present I am still Commissioner and responsible for the London police; therefore I may not speak."
"Yet, can you not suggest the reason of your resignation?"
"Not fully, but I will say that a great grievance has been the interference of the Home Office in the Police Department."
"Is that of recent date?"
"No. It has been so for two years. The Police Department had by law been originally placed under control of the Chief Secretary of State. The charge was next made over to the Home Secretary. However, this did not make as a department of the Home Office. I have resisted this latter assumption throughout.
"When it came to orders being written to us by the Home Office clerks it was a little too much."
"Were you not consulted?"
"Not directly. A curious feature of the whole business was that the government, represented by Mr. Matthews, held me personally responsible for all the crime in London and yet they made communications to my subordinates. It was first Assistant Commissioner Munro, now it is Mr. Anderson."
"Is there any trouble with the police?"
"No, that is all nonsense. No feeling such as has been represented exists. I think you will find that the Metropolitan Police are more contented now than they have been for years."
"You did not resign on account of the last Whitechapel murder?" Sir Charles adjusted his glasses and smiled.
"No," he resumed, emphatically: "no, I sent in my resignation before the Kelly murder, on the 8th of this month, and immediately after Mr. Matthews' statement in the House of Commons in reference to my article in Murray's Magazine. The resignation was accepted yesterday. That article was perfectly innocuous and could not do any harm."
"But the Monro case?"
"Well, if Mr. Munro, who had special charge of the detections, says he resigned on account of difference of opinion with me, this is the first I know of it."
"Have you any new information about the Whitechapel murders?"
"No. We are following up slight clews all the time. We received about fourteen hundred letters. Every single idea was investigated. For example, we were asked to drag a canal at a certain spot. We did so, but there was nothing to be found. People talk as if nothing had been done.
"As for the Malay story it cannot hold. We have had the water police on the alert from the first. Then we have followed up the idea of the murderous cook, and every slaughter house is under watch for a murderous butcher. In fact, every clew has been closely followed up, and there are some clews and ideas which still occupy our attention, but which it would be impolitic to foreshadow to the public."
London, Nov. 13, 1888.-The morning papers are not unkind to Sir Charles Warren. The Daily News, in taking leave, says:--"Sir Charles Warren has been so excellent and so efficient a public servant in other fields of work that, even while recognizing his failure as Chief Commissioner of Police, we feel bound to express the greatest sympathy with him. As a public man and as a soldier Sir Charles has always been distinguished for energy, capacity and chivalrous public spirit, but his late post was one for which he had scarcely any proper training. He was a soldier and London wanted a policeman. His training and experience were military, and his new duties were purely civilian. The thing to avoid in the police of a great city is the very thing that Sir Charles Warren was sure to bring into the metropolitan police, the military spirit. The police have never been so unpopular in London as they are now. They are a class apart. The better portion of the working people avoid them almost as much as the criminal classes. Every law-abiding person in the community ought to look upon the police with sympathy. Our London populace regards them with suspicion and dislike.
"Sir Charles warren by his military habits has certainly increased this feeling and nothing but a change or system will remove it. Sir Charles nevertheless deserves sympathy and commiseration in the failure which is his misfortune rather than his fault. He is, however, to be congratulated on having so promptly cut himself free from a position in which his training and qualities must always have prevented him from succeeding."
A "Jack the Ripper" in Paris Some Years Ago Forestalled the Murderer.
The Paris Temps recalls, in connection with the Whitechapel murders, a series of similar horrors which occurred in Paris six years ago. A Russian subject named Wassilyi murdered eight woman of loose character and was tried for the crimes. The jury declared him to be insane, and he was handed over to the Russian authorities and sent back to his own country, where he was confined in an asylum until January 1, 1888, when he was set at liberty.
The supposition naturally arises that he may have found his way to England and there renewed his crusade against fallen women.
