For almost 150 long time , London ’s Metropolitan Police have maintain a individual appeal of criminal memorabilia . Its origins can be trace to the mid-1870s , after a law required that prisoners ’ property be kept for them until their liberation . Most of this property was never exact , and object from the Prisoner ’s Property Store became a teaching collection , open only to officer and their invited guests . Inspector Percy Neame by and by named it the Murderer ’s Museum of Scotland Yard , and a few year afterwards the wardrobe dub it the Black Museum .
Despite the name changes , one affair has stay on consistent : It ’s been closed to the populace . This year , for the first time , original grounds and artefact are on display in a special showing at the Museum of London , The Crime Museum Uncovered , which runs until April 10 , 2016 .
1. YOU CAN SEE WHAT THE MUSEUM LOOKED LIKE 100 YEARS AGO.
Inside the Metropolitan Police ’s hidden Crime Museum at Scotland Yard , c.1900 , © Museum of London
Two of the room within the display are recreations of what the Crime Museum attend like in the former 1880s and 1900s . The rooms , which are ringed by ledge of decease masquerade , were modeled on illustrations made of the museum at that time .
2. PRISONERS FOUND WAYS TO AMUSE THEMSELVES.
Pin - shock absorber embroidered with human hair by repeat offender Annie Parker , 1879 © Museum of London
Annie Parker was arrested more than 400 times for drunkenness . While in prison , she work on stitching a sampler cushion as a endowment for the chaplain of the Clerkenwell House of Detention , embroidered with her own hair . She gave it to him in 1879 . The corners of the shock read , sew in pilus , “ Prudence , ” “ Justice , ” “ Fortitude , ” and , ironically , “ moderation . ”
3. IDENTIFYING PRISONERS USED TO BE A LOT OF WORK.
Handwritten criminal record posting for Arthur James Woodbine , aged 12 , 1896 © Museum of London
Before fingerprinting became widely used by the Metropolitan Police after 1901 , “ anthropometric ” observations were taken of each captive for identification purposes . These include skin colour , head length and breadth , finger’s breadth length , and foot length . Large metallic element calipers were used to record some of these measurements .
4. A VICTIM’S GALLSTONES HELPED CATCH THE ACID-BATH MURDERER.
physical object relate to the execution of Mrs Olive Durand - Deacon by John Haigh , 1949 © Museum of London
In 1949 , John Haigh met with well - to - do widow Olive Durand - Deacon to discuss her business architectural plan for fabricate contrived fingernail . Haigh had already murdered five people by then , and disposed of their bodies in a room he cerebrate fool - cogent evidence — break up them in sulphuric loony toons . After cave in her the same treatment , Haigh smugly suppose he ’d get away with murder , as there was no body . He confessed to turning her into sludge , and also claimed he was mad and drank his victims ’ lineage . Already know as the “ Acid Bath liquidator , ” Haigh came to be called the “ Vampire Killer ” in the press . After being convict by a thoroughgoing forensic investigation establish on the few item that were discovered remaining in the sludge — such as Durand - Deacon ’s gallstones — Haigh was hanged at Wandsworth Prison .
5. A SERIAL KILLER HELPED ABOLISH THE DEATH PENALTY IN THE UK.
In March 1953 , the bodies of three char were discovered at 10 Rillington Place . By the fourth dimension the manhunt for and investigation into old renter John Christie was done , the body count had climb to eight . Weirdly , three years originally , two bodies had been found in the same flat , and another world was hanged for those crimes — and Christie had been the chief witness for his prosecution . At Christie ’s trial , he claimed province for one of those earliest murders . The uncertainty this raised about the earliest conviction and the possibleness for error in a death - penalty sentence played a significant part in the abolition of majuscule punishment in Great Britain .
6. BEWARE OF EXES BEARING GIFTS.
In 1945 , a man yield a pair of opera glasses with out of sight , spring - loaded spike stand for to penetrate the eyes to his ex - fiancée , who had left him . This gruesome weapon system afterwards inspired a scene in the 1959 movieHorrors of the Black Museum , one of the butcherly plastic film of the 1950s .
7. … AND UMBRELLAS, JUST IN GENERAL.
Writer and diary keeper Georgi Markov , a defector from Bulgaria , was place upright on London ’s Waterloo Bridge in 1978 when he felt a sharp pain in his leg . A man near him rationalise , while picking up his umbrella , and go away in a taxicab . After Markov died four days later , a petite shot fill with a substance that might have been ricin was found embedded in his stage . The causa remains open to this day .
8. CRIMINALS AREN’T ALWAYS AS SMART AS THEY THINK THEY ARE.
A mid-20th - 100 burglar remember he was being abominably clever when he constructed fake - step makers out of shoes smaller than his own on the end of wooden blocks . He stamped the priming coat with them , leaving tracks that would not match his own . However , he left his own step alongside them , and so was caught .
9. THE MUSEUM HAS HAD SOME CELEBRITY VISITORS.
Visitor Quran containing name and date of individual who visited the Crime Museum , 1877 - 1904 © Museum of London
The crime museum ’s visitant ’s Bible , while mostly full of the names of police officers , lists other famed signatures . Some that bear out : Gilbert and Sullivan , 1882 ; Sir A. Conan Doyle , 1892 ; Harry Houdini , 1900 ; King George V , 1926 ; and Laurel and Hardy , 1947 .
Murder bag : a forensics kit used by police detective attend to offense scenes , c.1946 © Museum of London
