Jack Whicher

Detective Inspector Jonathan "Jack" Whicher (1 October 1814–29 June 1881) was one of the original eight members of the newly formed Detective Branch which was established at Scotland Yard in 1842.

In 1860 he was involved in the Constance Kent murder case which was the subject of Kate Summerscale's 2008 book The Suspicions of Mr Whicher and the film of the same name. He was one of the inspirations for Charles Dickens’s Inspector Bucket, Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse, Wilkie Collins's Sergeant Cuff and R. D. Wingfield's Jack Frost, among other fictional detectives.

Whicher was born in 1814 in Camberwell, London, the son of Rebecca and Richard Whicher, a gardener. He was baptised on 23 October 1814 at the church of St Giles in Camberwell. After working as a labourer he passed the physical and literacy tests and joined the Metropolitan Police on 18 September 1837 as a police constable with the number E47 (Holborn Division). Whicher was 5' 8" tall, with brown hair, pale skin and blue eyes. He married Elizabeth Harding (born 1818), and they had a son, Jonathan Whicher (born 1838), who died young. By 1841 he was living in a police dormitory at a stationhouse in Gray's Inn Lane in St Pancras. In August 1842 he and seven other men joined the newly formed Detective Branch at Scotland Yard. Whicher received the new number A27 (Whitehall Division) and was promoted to detective-sergeant shortly after. Whicher was reportedly described by a colleague as the "prince of detectives".Charles Dickens, who met him, described him as "shorter and thicker-set" than his fellow officers, marked with smallpox scars and possessed of "a reserved and thoughtful air, as if he were engaged in deep arithmetical calculations".William Henry Wills, Dickens's deputy editor at Household Words magazine, saw Whicher involved in police work in 1850 and described him as a "man of mystery".

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