Jeffries was born in Shadwell in London in 1864, the son of Emma (née Petty) (born 1838) and William Jeffries (1832-1870), a mariner, who married in 1859 at Christ Church in Tower Hamlets [REF].
Employed by a firm of tobacconists, from 1881 the 16-year-old Charles Jeffries was the second-in-command of a Whitechapel branch of the Skeleton Army and was well known for disrupting Salvation Army public meetings and on occasion had assaulted Salvation Army Soldiers and Officers.