Walter Dew

Walter Dew
Walter Dew in retirement
Born	(1863-04-07)7 April 1863 Hardingstone, Northamptonshire, England
Died	16 December 1947(1947-12-16) (aged 84)
Resting place	Durrington Cemetery, Worthing
Occupation	Metropolitan Police officer
Known for	Jack the Ripper and Dr Crippen cases

Detective Chief Inspector Walter Dew (17 April 1863 – 16 December 1947) was a Metropolitan Police officer who was involved in the hunt for both Jack the Ripper and Dr Crippen.

Dew was born at Far Cotton, in Hardingstone, Northamptonshire, one of seven children to Walter Dew Sr (ca 1822-1884), a railway guard, and his wife Eliza (ca 1832-1914). His family moved to London when he was 10. As a boy Dew was not a natural scholar, and left school aged 13. As a youth Dew found employment in a solicitor's office off Chancery Lane, but not liking the work he became a junior clerk at the offices of a seed-merchant in Holborn. Later, he followed his father on to the railways, for on the 1881 census he is listed as a 17-year-old railway porter living in Hammersmith in London. However, in 1882 he joined the Metropolitan Police, aged 19, and was given the warrant number 66711. He was posted to the Metropolitan Police's X Division (Paddington Green) in June 1882. On 15 November 1886 Dew married Kate Morris in Notting Hill. They had six children, one of whom died in infancy.

Early in 1887 Dew was transferred to Commercial Street police station in H Division (Whitechapel), where he was a detective constable in the Criminal Investigation Department during the Jack the Ripper murders of 1888.