Robert Anderson (Scotland Yard official)

Sir Robert Anderson, KCB (29 May 1841 – 15 November 1918), was the second Assistant Commissioner (Crime) of the London Metropolitan Police, from 1888 to 1901. He was also an intelligence officer, theologian and writer.

Anderson was born in Mountjoy Square, Dublin, Ireland. His father, Matthew Anderson, was Crown Solicitor, a distinguished elder in the Presbyterian Church of Ireland, and of Ulster Scots descent. Matthew married Mary, daughter of Samuel Lee of Derry. Robert described himself as "an anglicised Irishman of Scottish extraction". His elder brother Sir Samuel Lee Anderson was a successful barrister who invariably acted for the Crown, and like his brother also acted as an intelligence officer. Their sister Annie married Sir Walter Boyd, 1st Baronet, a dominant figure among the Irish judiciary in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and a staunch upholder of British rule in Ireland. Annie played a key role in her brother's religious development.

On leaving school, Anderson began a business apprenticeship in a large brewery, but after eighteen months he decided not to go into business and left. After studying in Boulogne-sur-Mer and Paris, he entered Trinity College, Dublin, where he graduated Bachelor of Arts in 1862, and in 1863 was called to the Irish Bar. He received a Bachelor of Laws degree from Trinity College in 1875.

Anderson began to practise as a barrister. However, in 1865 his father showed him papers relating to the trials of Fenians and he too became involved in the operations against them, becoming the foremost expert on them and operations against them. In 1868, he was called to London, following the murder of a policeman in Manchester during a Fenian jailbreak in September 1867 (see Manchester Martyrs) and the bombing of Clerkenwell Gaol in another rescue attempt three months later (see Clerkenwell Outrage). In April 1868 he was attached to the Home Office as adviser on political crime.

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