GEORGE HUTCHINSON

C R
I M E
The Crime Museum
Some years ago I stood with Gordon Honeycombe, who died in October of this year, eating canapés and drinking a
glass of wine amid the relics of heinous crime in Scotland Yard’s internationally famous Black Museum, as the Crime
Museum was still popularly known. Honeycombe had written The Murders of the Black Museum (1982), and we were
both at the Black to extend our good wishes on the retirement of curator, Bill Waddell (who in 1993 would write his own
book about the place, The Black Museum). I don’t think I have been to a party in a stranger venue. Happy days.
The Crime Museum Uncovered:
Inside Scotland Yard’s Special Collection
Jackie KeIly and Julia Hoffbrand
London: I.B. Taurus, 2015
www.ibtauris.com
ISBN: 9781781300411
softcover; 192pp; illus;
£12.99
‘Money cannot purchase access to it, and curious visitors are only admitted on orders signed by
senior executive officials who know them personally. For the museum contains too many of the
secrets of crime to be a wholesome place for the general public…’
So wrote George Dilnot in a chapter devoted to the Black Museum in his book Scotland Yard: The Methods and
Organisation of the Metropolitan Police. Dilnot was writing 100 years ago, but you still can’t buy a ticket to the Black
Museum. But you can buy the next best thing - from 9 October 2015 until 10 April 2016 the Museum of London is hosting
an exhibition of objects from the Crime Museum. I’d love to visit the exhibition, but unfortunately I won’t be able to,
but the accompanying book, The Crime Museum Uncovered, is an absolute cracker.
It’s written by Jackie Keily and Julia Hoffbrand, who curated the exhibition in partnership with the Metropolitan
Police Service and the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime. Hoffbrand had previously curated the excellent Jack the
Ripper exhibition at the Docklands Museum. The book discusses over four hundred carefully selected objects recalling
some of Britain’s most notorious crimes, including the Great Train Robbery, the Kray twins, and the Millennium Dome
diamond heist. There are nearly five hundred illustrations.
The book is divided into three sections, The Early Crime Museum, Individual Cases, and Themes.
The Early Crime Museum opens with an illustration of the visitors’ book, two interesting visitors being John Moore and
Tom Bullen of the Central News Agency. They visited on 26 July 1892 and may well have seen the ‘Dear Boss’ letter which
gave the world the name ‘Jack the Ripper’ and which may have been conceived and written by one or both these men.
The facsimile of the ‘Dear Boss’ is pictured, as is a copy of ‘Illustrated Circular, No. 76’ dating from 1905 and showing
a picture of ‘John Evest’, otherwise Michael Ostrog. This is a fascinating discovery of Ostrog in later life.
There are pictures of several death masks and the ropes used to hang various murderers, including the rope used to
hang Mary Pearcey. Pictures of weapons include the knife use by Richard Prince who murdered William Terriss and the
gun used by Edward Oxford in his ridiculous and half-hearted attempt to assassinate Queen Victoria.
Individual cases include the Stratton Brothers, Dr Crippen, the Siege of Sidney Street, Gordon Cummins (the so-called
Blackout Ripper), Neville Heath, John Haigh, Charlie and Eddie Richardson, and, inevitably, Ronald and Reginald Kray.
Ripperologist 146 October 2015 88