Charles Warren

This article is about the archaeologist Charles Warren. For other individuals, see Charles Warren (disambiguation) .

Sir Charles Warren

Sir Charles Warren , GCMG , KCB , FRS , (born February 7, 1840 in Bangor , † January 21, 1927 in Somerset ) was a British archaeologist , general and chief of the London police.

Life

Charles Warren, son of Major General Sir Charles Warren, Sr., attended Bridgnorth School and Wem High School. In 1854 he moved from Cheltenham College to the Military College in Sandhurst and then to the Royal Military Academy in Woolwich , which he attended from 1855 to 1857.

On December 27, 1857 he was promoted to lieutenant in the Royal Engineers , the British engineer corps. In 1864 he married Fanny Haydon, with whom he had three children. Just a year later, in 1865, he became a surveying instructor at the Royal School of Military Engineering in Chatham in the south of England .

With the Palestine Exploration Fund he traveled to Palestine in 1867 and contributed to some archaeological finds, including the so-called Mescha stele . His investigation of the ancient topography of Jerusalem and especially of the Temple Mount (Hebrew Har HaBeit, Arabic al-Haram Asch-Sharif) and its underground passages still serve as the basis of research today (where further investigations are usually impossible for political / religious reasons). The young Lord Kitchener of the Royal Engineers and Charles William Wilson were also involved . His most important discovery in this context is the so-called "Warren Shaft", part of the ancient water supply to Jerusalem. With the 60,000 pounds collected, the foundation was subsequently able to investigate central Jordan and the old Philistine regions. For his research he was admitted to the Royal Society in London in 1884 .

In 1870 he was forced to return to Great Britain due to illness and, after recovering, served in the Shoeburyness Artillery School from 1872 to 1876 . After this time he was ordered to South Africa for the first time to do service on the border with the Orange Free State . In the Transkei War from 1877 to 1878 he was badly wounded near Perie Bush. As a result, he was promoted to ( Brevet ) lieutenant colonel and used as a representative for indigenous questions in Bechuanaland , where he fought an uprising. In 1879 he was appointed administrator of Griqualand West .

In 1880 Warren returned to Britain and became chief surveyor instructor for the School of Military Engineering. He held this post almost continuously until 1884. In 1882, however, he was briefly sent to Sinai to track down Professor Edward Henry Palmer and find out what had happened to his expedition. He finally discovered that this expedition had been robbed and all members murdered, but he was able to convict the perpetrators. As a result he received several prestigious awards, including the title "Knight of Justice" from the Order of Saint John .

In December 1884 he was given command of a military expedition (the "Warren Expedition" with around 4,000 men and the first observation tethered balloons to be used in the British military) to Bechuanaland to ensure that British interests were safeguarded and the Boer- The Free States of Stellaland and Goshen , which were supported by the Transvaal and Germany, did not gain any more land from the indigenous tribe of Botswana. Warren managed to carry out this order without great bloodshed, and he was promoted to the Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St. Michael and St. George a year later .

In 1885 he ran in vain as an independent liberal candidate for the House of Commons . In 1886 he was appointed commander of the port city of Suakin in Sudan . Suakin and Wadi Halfa , near the Egyptian border, were the only places in Sudan held by Anglo-Egyptian troops against the Mahdi uprising at this time . However, he only stayed for a few weeks as he was appointed Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis , the agent for the London Police. At the same time he was promoted to major general in the British Army. From 1887 to 1888 he served in the London Police Department. With his military drill and the concern for seemingly trivial matters such as solid footwear, he was also criticized for the violent breakup of a demonstration by British radicals (Radical Federation) and workers in Trafalgar Square ("Bloody Sunday", November 13, 1887. It was about the arrest of an Irish member of parliament in connection with unrest in Ireland, but also about the high unemployment due to the recession from the 1870s to almost the turn of the century). It was in his service time that the famous serial killer Jack the Ripper was up to mischief. The police under Warren did not manage to catch the man. He countered the constant criticism of the press in an unwise manner by publicly supporting vigilante groups. Since he was also as a liberal in conflict with the Home Office under the Conservative (Tory) Henry Matthews , which led to constant intrigue in his office, he took his hat on November 9, 1888 and resigned from the police force. In 1888 he became Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB).

He returned to active military service at the beginning of the following year and was posted as commander of the garrison in Singapore , where he commanded the troops in the "Strait Settlements" and installed the fortress artillery for five years. He did not return to Great Britain until 1894 and commanded the Thames District between 1895 and 1897 , now with the rank of Lieutenant General . However, he retired that same year at the age of 57.

In 1899 , when the Boer War broke out , he returned to active service and was appointed commander of the Fifth Division of the South African Field Force . When General Buller launched the second attack to relieve the city of Ladysmith , he received Kop on 23/24 in the Battle of Spion . January 1900 took command of the armed forces deployed. Under his command, despite nominal superiority, there was one of the most devastating British defeats in the entire Boer War. British military historians such as Farwell blamed his grotesque misjudgments, hesitant behavior, and scrapping on trivial matters such as the condition of the oxen in the army. However, he succeeded in the following offensive in Natal by forcing the passage over the Tugela River and with a victory at Pieters Hill to contribute to the successful relief of Ladysmith. In August 1900 he was ordered back to Great Britain . He assumed a high administrative post in the Cape Colony and was appointed General in 1904 and Colonel-Commandant (Colonel) of the Royal Engineers in 1905, but retired that same year.

In 1908 he led his own group within the scout movement founded by his school friend and army colleague Robert Baden-Powell . He died of pneumonia due to influenza on January 21, 1927 at his home in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, and was buried next to his wife in the cemetery in the village of Westbere , Kent .

Warren was an active Freemason and First Master of the First Lodge, which was established specifically for the study of Freemasonry.

Works

• with Charles Wilson : The Recovery of Jerusalem. A Narrative of Exploration and Discovery in the City and the Holy Land. D. Appleton & Company, New York 1871 Archives
• Underground Jerusalem: An Account of Some of the Principal Difficulties Encountered in its Exploration and the Results Obtained. With a Narrative of an Expedition through the Jordan Valley and a Visit to the Samaritans. Richard Bentley and Son, London 1876 Archives
• The Temple or the Tomb . Richard Bentley and Son, London 1880 Archives
• with Claude Reignier Conder : The Survey of Western Palestine. Jerusalem . London 1884 Archives
• On the Veldt in the Seventies . Isbister and Co., London 1902 Archives
• The Ancient Cubit and Our Weights and Measures . London 1903 Archives
• The Early Weights and Measures of Mankind . London 1913 Archives

• Palestinian Exploration Quarterly 1869/70 contains the reports by Warren et al. a. (there are also reprints)

literature

• Arthur Conan Doyle : The Great Boer War , Smith, Elder & Co., London 1900 Archives
• Christiaan Rudolf de Wet : The fight between Bur and Brite: The Three Years War. Carl Siwinna, Kattowitz and Leipzig 1903.
• Owen Coetzer: The Anglo-Boer War: The Road to Infamy, 1899-1900 , Arms and Armor, 1996. ISBN 1-85409-366-5
• Byron Farwell: The Great Boer War , Allen Lane, London, 1976 ISBN 0-7139-0820-3
• Martin Fido and Keith Skinner: The Official Encyclopedia of Scotland Yard , Virgin Books, London 1999
• Rayne Kruger: Goodbye Dolly Gray: The Story of the Boer War , 1959
• Shimon Gibson and David Jacobson: Below the Temple Mound in Jerusalem- A Sourcebook on the Cisterns, Subterranean Chambers and Conduits of the Haram al-Sharif (BAR International Series 637), Tempus Reparatum, Oxford 1996 (with previously unpublished material by Warren)

Web links

Commons : Charles Warren  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• jacktheripper.de - CV of Sir Charles Warren
• Biography at the Palestinia Exploration Fund