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Robert Anderson (29 May 1841-15 November 1918) was the Assistant Commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police Service from 1888 to 1901.
Biography[]
Robert Anderson was born in Mountjoy Square, Dublin, Ireland in 1841 to an Anglo-Irish family of Scottish extraction. He became a lawyer in 1863 before becoming an expert on the Fenian Brotherhood, and, in 1868, he was called to London to investigate a Fenian jailbreak in Clerkenwell. He remained in London after the Fenians became dormant, and he served on the Prison Commission before combatting the Fenian bombing campaign that began in 1883. He was forced to resign his Home Office post in 1884 due to his ineffective means of combatting them, and he was removed from the Prison Commission in 1886. However, he was appointed as Assistant Commissioner in 1888, holding that title for the rest of his career. He oversaw the investigation of the Whitechapel murders, but he saw the murders as grossly over-sensationalized and vacationed on Switzerland for much of the time that Jack the Ripper murdered in Whitechapel, leaving the Metropolitan Police Service leaderless during the biggest challenge in its history. He died in 1918.