Sir melville macnaghten biography

British police commissioner (1853–1921)

Sir Melville Leslie MacnaghtenCB KPM (16 June 1853, Woodford, London −12 May 1921) was Assistant Commissioner (Crime) of the London Metropolitan Police from 1903 to 1913.

A highly regarded and famously affable figure of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras he played major investigative roles in cases that led to the establishment and acceptance of fingerprint identification. He was also a major player in the pursuit and capture of Dr.

Crippen, and of the exoneration of a wrongly convicted man, Adolph Beck, which helped lead to the creation of the Court of Criminal Appeal in 1907.

When he prematurely retired in 1913 due to illness, Macnaghten claimed to journalists that he knew the exact identity of Jack the Ripper, the nickname of the unknown serial killer of poor prostitutes in London's impoverished East End during the late Victorian era.

The police chief called the killer "that remarkable man",^[1]