Black Museum

The Black Museum of Scotland Yard is a famed collection of criminal memorabilia kept at the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police in London, England. Established in 1948, it was intended to help the police in their study of crime and criminals. Despite being intended primarily for use by the police, the public could see it by special arrangement. The name "Black Museum" was a nickname; the collection was formally referred to as the "Museum."The term was also applied to a museum of failed engineering components collected by David Kirkaldy at his testing works at 99 Southwark Street, Southwark, London. The latter museum was destroyed in the London Blitz.

About

The exhibits included many death masks made of executed criminals, as well as collections of weapons, tools used by burglars, and items that had been evidence in crimes. In 1951, Orson Welles produced a radio program for the BBC called "The Black Museum", inspired by the catalogue of items on display. Each week, he featured an item from the museum and produced a dramatization of the story surrounding the object to the macabre delight of audiences. The American radio writer Wyllis Cooper also wrote and directed a similar anthology for NBC that ran at the same time in the U. S. Called "Whitehall 1212", for the telephone number of Scotland Yard, the program debuted on November 18, 1951, hosted by Chief Superintendent John Davidson, curator of the Black Museum.

The Museum was moved to New Scotland Yard in the 1980s and was subject to substantial renovation in recent years. The "Crime Museum", as it is now called, currently resides in Room 101 at New Scotland Yard and consists of two sections. The first, a replica of the original museum contains a substantial selection of melee weapons, some overt, some concealed, including shotgun umbrellas and numerous walking stick swords. This room also contains a selection of hangman's nooses including that used to perform the UK's last ever execution and notes allegedly written by Jack the Ripper. The newer section of the museum contains many exhibits from 20th century crimes, notable inclusions include the fake De Beers diamond from the Millennium Dome heist and Dennis Nilsen's stove. The museum can be visited by Police officers from any of the country's police forces by prior appointment, though not without difficulty due to its popularity.

The Black Museum of criminal artefacts also hosts over 500 items preserved at a constant temperature of sixty-two degrees, a special place is reserved for a set of printing plates, a remarkable series of forged bank-notes, and a cunningly hollowed out kitchen door once used to conceal some of them, once belonging to "Charles Black", the most prolific counterfeiter in the Western Hemisphere.

Trivia

*There is a fictional Black Museum, inspired by the actual one, inside the Grand Hall of Justice in the "Judge Dredd" comic strip.

Further reading

*Ohmart, Ben. "It's That Time Again." (2002) (Albany: BearManor Media) ISBN 0-9714570-2-6

External links

* [http://www.met.police.uk/history/friends.htm Friends' statement]
* [http://www.met.police.uk/history/crime_museum.htm Metopolitan Police's virtual Crime Museum]
* [http://blogs.salon.com/0003139/2004/05/23.html Discussion of "Whitehall 1212"]