Charles Tegart

Sir Charles Augustus Tegart KCIE KPM (1881 – 6 April 1946), the second son of Rev. Joseph Poulter Tegart, was a colonial police officer in India and Mandatory Palestine, variously earning praise for his industry and efficiency, and notoriety for his brutality and use of torture.^{[citation needed]}

Early Life

Tegart was the son of a Church of Ireland clergyman, Rev. J.P. Tegart of Dunboyne, County Meath. He was educated at Portora Royal School, Enniskillen and Trinity College, Dublin.

Career in India

He joined the Calcutta Police in 1901, becoming head of its Detective Department. He served almost continuously in Calcutta for a period of thirty years until he was appointed a member of the Secretary of State's Indian Council in December 1931.

He was the first officer of the Indian Police (IP) in the organisation and on his report the Special Branch was created.

He reorganised the city police force and made it efficient.^{[citation needed]} He was a highly decorated officer, awarded the King's Police Medal in 1911. He became Superintendent of Police in 1908, Deputy Commissioner in 1913, Deputy-Inspector General (Intelligence) in 1918, and Commissioner of Calcutta Police from 1923 to 1931.

He was admired for keeping the city free from crime.^{[citation needed]} However, he earned notoriety amongst the Bengal opponents of British rule, especially from freedom fighters. In their eyes, he was an obdurate opponent of Indian nationalism to the point of illegality, and was known for the ruthless torture of prisoners.^{[citation needed]}

Sir Charles Tegart was involved in a skirmish with Indian revolutionaries led by Jatindranath Mukherjee at Balasore in Orissa on 9 September 1915.

Several attempts were made to assassinate Tegart:

• On 12 January 1924 at Chowringhee Road in Calcutta, by Gopinath Saha, an Indian extremist, who erroneously shot down a white man, Mr. Ernest Day, whom he mistook for Tegart.
• On 25 August 1930 at Dalhousie Square in Calcutta, by throwing a bomb into the car in which Tegart was travelling, but Tegart shot down the revolutionary and escaped unhurt.

Tegart's efficiency in curbing the freedom-fighting activities of the Indians came in for praise from Lord Edward Robert Lytton, then Governor of Bengal. He was awarded the KCIE in 1937.

Career in Palestine

In view of his expertise, the British authorities sent him to the British Mandate of Palestine, then in the throes of the Arab Revolt, to advise the Inspector General on matters of security. He arrived there on 21 October 1938.^{[citation needed]}

In due course he advised the construction of a large number of reinforced concrete police stations and posts which could be defended against attack, and of a frontier fence along the northern border of Palestine to control the movement of insurgents, goods and weapons. His recommendations were accepted and some 50 new "Tegart forts",^[1] as they came to be known, were built throughout Palestine. Many of them are still in use, some by Israeli forces and others by Palestinian ones, while others were destroyed in various rounds of fighting.

Tegart also imported Doberman dogs from South Africa and established an interrogation centre in Jerusalem to train interrogators in torture.^{[citation needed]} It is recorded^[where?] that suspects underwent brutal questioning, involving humiliation and the Turkish practice of falaka (beating prisoners on the soles of their feet).

See also

• Arab Investigation Centres, built under the direction of Charles Tegart
• Cellular Jail
• Bagha Jatin, comments by Tegart on his death
• Herbert Dowbiggin, British colonial policeman

Further reading

• Tutun Mukherjee, "Colonialism, Surveillance and Memoirs of travel: Tegart's Diaries and the Andaman Cellular Jail", in Sachidananda Mohanty (ed.) Travel writing and the Empire, Katha, 2004. ISBN 8187649364. See also a review of this book in The Hindu.

Notes

1. ^ Anton La Guardia, "Jericho Jail Creates Own Modern History", Arab News, 24 March 2006.

Archive sources

• Sir Charles Tegart Collection^{[dead link]}, held at St Antony's College, Oxford University.

Police appointments
Preceded by Sir Reginald Clarke	Police Commissioner of Calcutta 1923–1931	Succeeded by L. H. Colson

Persondata
Name	Tegart, Charles
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1881
Place of birth
Date of death	6 April 1946
Place of death