A trip to the Crime Museum

The room itself is small but cleverly arranged. There are chairs in the corner in case you suddenly feel faint. I soon discover why. The first thing you’ll see, looking down, is Charlie Peace’s violin. Look up and you’ll see his ladder, a ‘do not touch’ sign on one rung. His tools and skeleton keys are nearby. Against the nearest wall you’ll find a cabinet of curios including the Tichbourne Claimant’s hair, a letter from Baby Farmer Amelia Dyer, and the snuff box of John Thurtell (the man who cut the throat of solicitor William Weare). Above loom original sketches of Jack the Ripper’s crime scenes, carefully hand-coloured by the artist. Turn again and you’ll find a wall of hangmen’s nooses, each one labelled with the names of their respective clients (including Mrs Pearcey, who wheeled her victim down the road in a large Victorian pram). Did you know that early-Victorian ropes – the ones used when hangings still took place outside the prison walls – are much thinner than later ones? The dark brown ropes of the 1840s look like clothes lines – camping lines. By the end of the century they are cream-coloured and as thick as half my wrist – measured by the thumb, Neil tells me. Crime historian and The History Press author Neil Storey is, in fact, the reason I’m looking at these exhibits, which very few people have ever seen – he kindly invited me to be his guest at the annual soiree of the Met Police History Society, and he (and the Society, who have allowed me to attend and prove to be the best company you can imagine meeting) will consequently be on my Christmas-card list for life.   

So – back to the museum! Turn again and you’ll find cabinets filled with weapons: weapons which have been used to attack the police; umbrella guns and rings with razors that pop out; the revolver that Ruth Ellis used to shoot her lover (and her post-mortem report, which I missed but which lists ‘aroma of brandy’ in the section on her stomach contents); the old-fashioned pistol that Oxford fired at Queen Victoria. A bust of Frederick Deeming looks on approvingly from his plinth in the corner. Then that infamous cooker (alongside a bath, which I’ll also pass over), followed by tall glass cases filled with some of the most famous objects in British criminal history. Inside you’ll find a shelf displaying a piece of vertebrae from John Christie’s garden, tree roots twisting through it, and the indestructible red plastic handbag and dentures of Mrs Durand-Deacon – these arranged, of course, next to the acid-splashed apron of John George Haigh, the man who took her life.

Then there are the poisoners: the fragments of Cora Crippen’s pyjamas (underneath a telegram declaring ‘Crippen caught!’); the actual fly paper and neatly labelled jars of ‘meat juices’ from the trial of the famous Florence Maybrick; the potions of Dr Neil Cream. Turn to see the killer suitcase and wooden crossbow of the Kray brothers, and try not to brush the wicker trunk which once contained Miss Minnie Bonati as you pass. I saw the tin opener – don’t ask – of the Blackout Killer, and something I won’t dwell on floating in a large glass jar nearby. Dark its contents may be, but I’ve never enjoyed a museum so much in all my life. To see an item and think ‘that’s the real one’ was extraordinary. Not a photograph. Not a description. Not a copy. The real bones, bullets and bottles. (One tomato-ketchup bottle stands out – as do Ronnie Biggs’ fingerprints, glowing white on its side.)

I loved the whole day – the talk by Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, the section of the upcoming film Secrets of Scotland Yard (11 June on Channel 19 – don’t miss it!) before dinner. So word to the wise: don’t ask me about it unless you really want to know, because I’ll tell you everything – even if you’re trying to eat your dinner. Did I mention the oven?