Scotland Yard - The Black or Crime Museum

The museum is in room 101 at New Scotland Yard, Victoria – an L-shaped space crammed with glass display cabinets containing items covering over 140 years of crime and criminals.

Inspector Neame, with the help of a P.C. Randall, gathered together sufficient material of both old and new cases to enable a proper museum to be opened. The actual date in 1875 when it opened is not known, but the permanent appointment of Neame and Randall to duty in the Prisoners Property Store on the 12th April suggests that the museum came into being in the latter part of that year.

There was no official opening of the museum, and two years elapsed before we find a record of the first visitors. This was on the 6th October 1877 when the Commissioner, Sir Edmund Henderson, KCB, accompanied by the Assistant Commissioners, Lt. Col. Labolmondiere and Capt. Harris, visited with other dignitaries. By now there was a steady increase in the number viewing the displays and the first visitors book, which spans some eighteen years from 1877 to 1894, reads like a current 'Who's Who'. Certainly not all visitors were asked to sign the visitors book but, as instruction in the museum was part of CID training, the museum was in constant use.

In 1877 the name 'Black Museum' was coined, when on the 8th April a reporter from 'The Observer' newspaper used the term after being refused a visit by Inspector Neame. However the museum is now referred to as the Crime Museum.

In 1890 the museum moved with the Metropolitan Police Office to new premises at the other end of Whitehall, on the newly constructed Thames Embankment. The building, constructed by Norman Shaw RA, and made of granite quarried by convicts on Dartmoor, was called New Scotland Yard. A set of rooms in the basement housed the museum and, although there was no Curator as such, PC Randall was responsible for keeping the place tidy, adding to exhibits, vetting applications for visits and arranging dates for them. 

The museum was closed during both World Wars, and in 1967, with the move of the Metropolitan Police Headquarters to new premises in Victoria Street, S.W.1, the museum was housed in rooms on the second floor. In 1981 a new, redesigned museum was opened on the first floor.

The Present Museum

The present museum is in two rooms The first contains an extensive collection of weapons, all of which have been used in murders or serious assaults in London, and displays items from famous cases, generally prior to 1900, such as Jack the Ripper and 'Charlie Peace'. 
A morbid display, which attracts comment, is the display of the death masks of people hanged at Newgate Prison which adorn a high shelf and look down on visitors. The second room contains cabinets under the following categories,

• Famous Murders
• Notorious Poisoners
• Murder of Police Officers
• Royalty
• Bank Robberies
• Espionage
• Sieges
• Hostages and hijacking

Famous cases shown in the museum include:

• Ruth Ellis
• John Reginald Halliday Christie
• Dennis Nilsen
• Dr. Crippen
• Craig Bentley

A special place is reserved for a set of printing plates, a remarkable series of forged banknotes, and a cunningly hollowed-out kitchen door once used to conceal them. These items formerly belonged to Charles Black, the most prolific counterfeiter in the Western Hemisphere.

The museum is not open to members of the public but is now used as a lecture theatre for the curator to lecture police officers and staff.

You can purchase a DVD of a tour of the museum HERE.

Scotland Yard are to move in their new headquarters in Whitehall in 2015. Discussions are taking place as to whether the crime museum should be opened to the public.