James Monro
James Monro was born in Edinburgh in 1838 and educated at Edinburgh High School, and Edinburgh and Berlin Universities. His proudest boast was that he was born, bred and educated in Edinburgh. He was Assistant Magistrate, and Inspector General of police in Bombay, and resigned in 1884.
He joined the Metropolitan police force in 1884 as Assistant commissioner in charge of C.I.D. and resigned in August 1888 because he was unable to gain complete control of the C.I.D from Metropolitan police Commissioner Sir Charles Warren. He was head of the Detective Service - section D (an unofficial title) with responsibility for observing the activities of the Fenians. He later took over as Commissioner, after Warren resigned on 9th November, and remained in the post until 1890, when he again resigned.
He founded and ran, the Ranaghat Christian medical mission in India 1890-1903. He contemplated retiring to India, but instead returned to Scotland, and later Cheltenham where he died in 1920.
He was said to be blessed with the instinct of a born detective. Tom Cullen regarded him as, 'Possibly the only man at Scotland Yard who was capable of tracking down the killer', and was considered a firm disciplinarian. It was said of him that he was loved by all the men who served under him, though was said to have been a difficult character in other respects.
After his retirement, he said in the presence of one grandson, 'The Ripper was never caught, but he should have been'. He left some papers with his eldest son Charles, in which he described his theory on the Ripper as, 'A very hot potato'. Unfortunately the papers were said to have been burnt without his theory ever been revealed.
Monro has been mentioned as a possible Ripper suspect by a theorist in Australia who claims Monro had a pathological hatred of Sir Charles Warren, though has offered no evidence to support this claim.
