Black Museum
The Black Museum (also Crime Museum of Scotland Yard ), official name Metropolitan Police Crime Museum , is a collection of memorabilia from criminal cases kept in New Scotland Yard , the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Service in London .
history
The collection came about by chance and unofficially in 1874. It was housed in Scotland Yard and developed from the collection of objects belonging to prisoners. The legal basis was the Prisoners 'Property Act 1869 ( Prisoners' Property Act ). The aim was to provide the police with illustrative materials to help them investigate crimes and criminal cases by allowing them to keep evidence for educational use. The collection was not accessible until 1875. A police inspector and another police officer were seconded to manage the collection.
Creation of the collection
The collection, later called "the Black Museum", was conceived in 1874 by an inspector on duty who had collected a number of items to give police officers practical advice on how to detect and prevent crimes. Before the 1869 Act, items used in the pursuit of a crime were kept by the police until their owners reclaimed them. The 1869 Act gave the police the power to either destroy these items or keep them for teaching purposes. Towards the end of 1874, official approval was given to open a crime museum. The exact opening date in 1875 is not known.
The number of objects in the collection grew steadily. The first visitors were registered in writing on October 6, 1877. The first visitor's book covering the period from 1877 to 1894 reads like a historical Who's Who . Probably not all visitors are registered in these books. But since the lessons in the museum were part of the police training (CID training), the museum was constantly in use.
The name Black Museum was coined in 1877 when a reporter from the Observer used the term for the first time on April 8th after he was refused entry by the responsible inspector.
Black Museum moves to New Scotland Yard
In 1890, the museum moved with the Metropolitan Police Department to new premises at the other end of Whitehall on the newly constructed Thames Embankment . The architect Norman Shaw had a representative building erected under the name New Scotland Yard . Some basement rooms housed the collection. While there was no official curator , a police constable was responsible for day-to-day operations, adding exhibits, checking requests for visits, and making appointments. The museum was closed during WWI and WWII. In 1967, it was moved to the second floor in connection with the move of the Metropolitan Police Headquarters to new premises on Victoria Street, SW1. The collection is currently housed in room no. 101 (in two rooms).
The museum can be visited by members of the country's police force by appointment.
The collection
The museum was relocated to New Scotland Yard in the 1980s and has undergone major renovations in recent years. The Crime Museum has two departments. The first is a replica of the original museum and contains an extensive collection of melee weapons, some of which are hidden and some of which were used in murders or serious attacks in London, including shotguns disguised as umbrellas and numerous walking stick swords. The room also contains a selection of hangman's knot ( hangman's nooses ), a collection of death masks of those executed. There are also papers from famous cases and letters purportedly written by Jack the Ripper .
The second section contains exhibits from crimes from the 20th century, e.g. B. crime scene photographs, phantom drawings and u. a. the fake De Beers diamonds from the Millennium Dome heist and Dennis Nilsen's original stove. There are showcases on the following topics: Famous murders, notorious poisoners, murder of police officers, royalties, bank robberies, espionage, sieges and hostage-taking, and kidnappings with real exhibits and details. On display is the pellet filled with ricin , with which the Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov was killed in 1978 . Also on display is a model of the umbrella used to fire the pellet.
The Black Museum houses more than 500 items that are kept at a constant temperature of sixty-two degrees Fahrenheit (≈ 16 ° Celsius ). A special space is reserved for printing plates for counterfeiting banknotes and for a hollowed-out kitchen door from the counterfeiting workshop of Charles Black, the most productive counterfeiter in the western hemisphere.
Documented criminal cases (selection)
- Udham Singh , Indian revolutionary who shot and killed Michael O'Dwyer , the former lieutenant governor of the Punjab in British India.
- Ruth Ellis , the last woman to be executed in the UK after being convicted of the murder of her lover David Blakely.
- John Christie , English serial killer of the 1940s and early 1950s.
- The Stratton Brothers were the first in Britain to be convicted of murder based on fingerprints found on the scene.
- John George Haigh , English serial killer who committed acts between 1944 and 1949.
- Neville Heath, English murderer executed in London in 1946 who was responsible for the murders of at least two young women.
- Dennis Nilsen , a serial killer and necrophiliac also known as the Muswell Hill Murderer and the Kindly Killer, who murdered 15 young men in London.
- Thomas Neill Cream , ( Lambeth Poisoner ), a Scottish born serial killer
- Keith Blakelock, London Metropolitan Police officer who was stabbed to death in the Broadwater Farm housing estate. His overall is on display. Several people were charged with murder but acquitted. The Metropolitan Police continue to pursue leads that could lead to the investigation of the case.
Reception in film, literature and comics
- There's a fictional Black Museum inspired by the actual one in the Great Hall of Justice on the Judge Dredd comic strip .
- A fictional version of the Black Museum is often mentioned in the Dylan Dog comic series called. In some stories, exhibits are stolen from the museum.
- In the 1944 film The Lodger , Inspector Warwick ( George Sanders ) gives Kitty Langley a tour of the museum (Merle Oberon).
- The 1958 horror film Horrors of the Black Museum references the Black Museum in a story of a crime writer (played by Michael Gough) who commits gruesome murders for the purpose of writing articles and books about them for public consumption.
- The fourth series of Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror has an episode called "Black Museum".
- Tony Parsons wrote about the Black Museum in his books on detective Max Wolfe.
Reception in the media, exhibitions
In 1951, British commercial radio producer Harry Alan Towers produced the Orson Welles hosted radio series "The Black Museum", inspired by the catalog of pieces on display. Each week the program featured an article from the museum and a dramatization of the story around the object. Often mistakenly referred to as a BBC production, Towers commercially syndicated the program in the English-speaking world. American radio maker Wyllis Cooper wrote and directed a similar series for NBC that aired in the United States at the same time. The series was called "Whitehall 1212" after the Scotland Yard phone number. The program began on November 18, 1951 and was moderated by Chief Superintendent John Davidson, curator of the Black Museum.
An exhibition of objects entitled "The Crime Museum Uncovered" took place at the Museum of London from October 9, 2015 - April 10, 2016.
Individual evidence
- ↑ The Mayor of Londond: Metropolitan Police Museum
- ^ E. Godfrey: Masculinity, Crime and Self-Defense in Victorian Literature. London: MacMillan 2011. p. 107.
- ^ New Scotland Yard, 8-10 Broadway, London SW1H 0BG.Retrieved October 10, 2018
- ↑ a b The Black Museum, p. 171, ISBN 978-0-316-90332-5 .
- ^ The Black Museum, p. 161, ISBN 978-0-316-90332-5 .
- ^ The Black Museum, p. 84, ISBN 978-0-316-90332-5 .
- ↑ DNA test for Blakelock's uniform. BBC News, October 3, 2004, accessed October 2, 2018 .
- ↑ Max Wolf. New Scotland Yard, 8-10 Broadway, London SW1H 0BG. Retrieved October 10, 2018
- ^ John Dunning: On the Air. The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. New York, Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press 1998. p. 721
- ↑ Crime Museum Uncovered, Museum of London, review: 'entertaining and chilling' The Telegraph, October 8, 2015, accessed October 9, 2018