Sir Ralph Moor

Sir Ralph Denham Rayment Moor (1860–1909) joined the Royal Irish Constabulary, transferred to the Niger Coast in 1891 and succeeded MacDonald in 1896. After the killing of Acting Consul-General James Phillips and his party on 4 January 1897 outside Benin City, Moor commanded (with Admiral Rawson) the Benin Punitive Expedition of February 1897 — 1,200 Royal Marines and Niger Coast Constabulary that sacked Benin City on 18 February 1897, deposed and deported Oba Ovonramwen to Calabar, and looted the royal bronzes, ivories and brasses now scattered across the British Museum, Berlin's Ethnologisches Museum, and 160 other institutions.

In December 1901 he authorised the Aro Expedition — 87 officers, 1,500 troops, four columns — that destroyed the Ibini Ukpabi oracle ('Long Juju') at Arochukwu on 28 December 1901 and ended the Aro Confederacy's grip on the inland slave trade. In 1900 the Niger Coast Protectorate was reorganised as the Protectorate of Southern Nigeria with Moor as High Commissioner. He retired in 1903, suffered from depression, and took his own life with prussic acid at his home in Surrey on 14 September 1909.