The Black Museum Bill Waddell Documentary 1988 Complete

Here's a definitive documentary about Scotland Yard's museum of criminology known as "The Black Museum" This was broadcast on ITV in 1988,and written and presented by the museums curator of the time Bill Waddell.

The Crime Museum
Early drawing of the Crime Museum previously known as the "Black Museum"
The Prisoners Property Act of 1869 gave authority for police to retain certain items of prisoners' property for instructional purposes, but it was the opening of the Central Prisoners Property Store on 25th April 1874 that provided the opportunity to start a collection. The store was housed in No. 1 Great Scotland Yard, which was at the rear of the Commissioner's Office at No. 4, Whitehall Place.

The idea of a crime museum was conceived by an Inspector Neame who had already collected together a number of items, with the intention of giving police officers practical instruction on how to detect and prevent burglary, and it is certain that by the latter part of 1874, although it was not described as such, a museum of sorts was in existence. It was later that year that the official authority was given for a proper crime museum to be opened.

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'.