Warren's Map

The fog swirls down the Thames as the night sets in. The timeless mists are ready, one more time, to hide the shadowy activities of Londoners who, like bats, swarm the back streets after dark. Will the city’s most notorious predator, a veritable vampire, pounce tonight?

The lazy autumn sun single-handedly battles miasma and smog as it struggles to make dawn. A shaky hand drops a Wedgwood cup, spilling some Earl Grey on a clean tablecloth, a metaphor for a decaying Empire. But the matter at hand is more pressing than the uncontrollable geopolitics of world affairs. The vampire struck again last night. The cause of the interrupted breakfast is not the news of the latest predatory strike. It is the realisation of what will follow: impotence is a powerful political force that can destroy even the most accomplished. This is the last straw: Charles Warren, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, has been defeated and must go. Jack, our blood-sucking ripper, lives on and will strike another day.

The sands settle once more. Nothing has changed. Like many a modern football team striving for success, a change of manager has not altered the fortunes. Jack continues to terrorise the streets of London. Warren takes stock of his life. In a distant time and place, a tiny limestone Rock at a time when Empire still had meaning, a young officer had lived a life of freedom under the Mediterranean sun. Gibraltar was unaccustomed to peace and it was making the most of it. The city was a bee hive as wind and steam brought people and merchandise from the furthest confines of the planet. But so many people and so little hygiene were soon to create havoc in the population as the spectre of cholera loomed.

Charles Warren had not worried about these things. He shared every youth’s belief in personal immunity from fate. Nothing could stop him. He walked and climbed every bit of the limestone Pillar that had been put there by Hercules for him to survey eons later. And he was going to chart every one of its hidden secrets. Warren produced a spectacular map of Gibraltar, with the elegance and character that escapes a modern-day geographic information system. Things took longer then but, then again, the best dishes take time to bake. We have lost in quality what we have gained in speed.

The year is now 2010 AD. A family visits the Gibraltar Museum and they marvel at a wonderful model of the Rock that occupies an entire room. It took three years to make, from 1865 to 1868 and they wonder how it was made and who did it. The young boy calls his parents over and draws attention to a plaque that tells them the model was based on a detailed survey by a Lieutenant Charles Warren. They move on to the next room and Warren returns to anonymity. Meanwhile Jack the Ripper’s infamy guaranteed him immortality. Life and history are contingent. If we could go back to Warren’s time on the Rock and replayed the tape, would he have become Commissioner of the Metropolitan, and would Jack have terrorised London?


Clive Finlayson
This article was first published in the Gibraltar Chronicle