Sir Charles Haughton Rafter (1860 – 23 August 1935) was a British police officer who served as Chief Constable of the Birmingham City Police from 1899 until his death in 1935. Early life and education Rafter was born in Belfast, the son of William Pearse Rafter (died 1892), a linen merchant, and his wife Elizabeth (née Manning). In September 1870 Rafter entered the Royal Belfast Academical Institution. He later studied at the Queen's University of Ireland and the University of London. Royal Irish Constabulary He came top of the entrance examinations for the Royal Irish Constabulary, which he joined as a gentleman cadet in 1882. His first duty was to patrol Phoenix Park, Dublin, nightly, shortly after the murders of Lord Frederick Cavendish, the chief secretary of Ireland, and his under-secretary, Thomas Henry Burke, by Irish republican nationalists. He was later promoted to district inspector, and served for sixteen years, being quartered at various times in Woodford, County Galway, Ballinrobe, County Mayo, Tipperary Town, County Tipperary, and Boyle, County Roscommon. On 13 January 1885, he married Olivia Lucinda (1853–1914), daughter of Arthur Nugent JP, of Crannagh, County Galway. Appointment as Chief Constable of Birmingham In July 1899, Rafter was one of fifty candidates who applied to succeed Joseph Farndale as chief constable of Birmingham. Of the eight short-listed candidates for interview, only Rafter appeared in uniform. This impressed the city's watch committee, which unanimously decided to appoint him with a salary of £800. His age was given as forty-two. Rafter was recommended to the Birmingham watch committee as "skilled in the preservation or restoration of peace in troubled districts where party feeling runs high". This ability was tested early in his time at Birmingham, when the radical Welsh MP David Lloyd George visited the city on 18 December 1901, at the invitation of the Birmingham Liberal Association, to deliver a speech at the town hall critical of the government's conduct during the South African War. Birmingham was the Liberal Unionist stronghold of Joseph Chamberlain, the colonial secretary associated with the war policy, and Rafter anticipated trouble. He ordered 400 officers on duty within the town hall and neighbourhood. A large crowd, armed with stones, brick-ends, and other missiles, stormed the town hall and smashed windows and street lamps in Victoria Square; Rafter personally escorted Lloyd George from the platform to a secure room underneath, from which he enabled the future