Gordon Honeycombe - Murders of the Black Museum: The Dark Secrets Behind a Hundred Years of the Most Notorious Crimes in Britain

Note

The years given above refer to the year of the crime in which the named victim was killed, not the year in which the ensuing trial took place. In cases of multiple killing the victim listed is the one for whose death the accused was tried. Neither Tratsart nor Merrett ever came to trial.

T he Black Museum is now called the Crime Museum. The original Black Museum came into being in 1875, when exhibits that had been acquired as evidence and produced in court in connection with various crimes were collected together and privately displayed in a cellar in 1 Palace Place, Old Scotland Yard, Whitehall. Ten years later, the augmented collection was moved to a small back room on the second floor of the offices of the Convict Supervision Department. By then the objects on display, consisting mainly of weapons, and all carefully labelled, numbered about 150.

In 1890, when the Metropolitan Police began moving into their impressive new headquarters at New Scotland Yard on the Victoria Embankment (designed by Norman Shaw, RA), the museum went too. It was then called the Police Museum, its primary object being to provide some lessons in criminology for young policemen and its secondary one to act as a repository for artefacts associated with celebrated crimes and criminals. Privileged visitors, criminologists, lawyers, policemen and people working with the police were guided around the museum by the curator, who over the previous century has always been a former policeman, with a special responsibility for the cataloguing, maintenance and display of the exhibits, and for dealing with correspondence from criminologists all over the world.

In 1968, when the Metropolitan Police moved into their modern high-rise premises at 10 The Broadway, London SW1, the museum by now officially called the Crime Museum occupied a large room on the second floor. Eleven years later, on the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Metropolitan Police force, it was decided to reassess, reorganise and modernise every aspect of the museum as well as the three other Metropolitan Police museums: the Historical Museum on the top floor of Bow Street police station; the Thames Museum at Wapping; and the Training Museum in Hendon Training School. The last had taken over the instructional role previously shared with the Crime Museum, which was now able to fulfil its entire function as a museum. Its original title was restored, and on 12 October 1981 the Black Museum, on the first floor of New Scotland Yard, was officially reopened by the Commissioner, Sir David McNee.

The Black Museums historical collection of articles and exhibits was and is unique. It covers more than murder. Other sections deal with Forgeries, Espionage, Drugs, Offensive Weapons, Abortions, Gaming, Housebreaking, Bombs and Sieges, and Crime pre-1900. The museum also houses displays concentrating on particular crimes, such as the Great Train Robbery and the attempted kidnapping of Princess Anne, and possesses such peculiar exhibits as Mata Haris visiting card, a fake Cullinan diamond, a loving-cup skull with silver handles, two death masks of Heinrich Himmler, and thirty-two plaster casts of the heads of hanged criminals, men and women, executed in the first half of the nineteenth century at Newgate in London, at Derby and York. The heads, still bearing the mark of the rope, are said to have been made to record the features of those who were executed. Many criminals then used aliases, and the only way of identifying them after death (before the use of photographs and fingerprints) was to keep these plaster likenesses. In addition, some if not all of the heads were probably made for doctors or phrenologists bent on proving theories about the physiognomy of criminal types by examining the bumps and shape of a criminals head after its owner was dead and gone.

Visitors books, also maintained in the museum, contain records of a different sort: the signatures of such notable persons as King George V, Edward, Prince of Wales, Stanley Baldwin, Sir Arthur Sullivan, WS Gilbert, Captain Shaw of the London Fire Brigade, and William Marwood, executioner.

There is an undisplayed mass of other material (newspapers, cuttings, photographs, documents, letters and miscellaneous objects) relating to the exhibits on show and to other crimes. This material is kept under lock and key, generally in cabinets or cupboards below the showcases and mainly because space is restricted, but also because some of the items for instance, the police photographs of Gordon Cumminss victims are too obscene to be shown. The museum was rearranged and refurbished early in 2008.

I first visited the Black Museum in 1979. It was a most interesting and very disturbing experience. There was a certain grim fascination in seeing the actual instruments and implements used by criminals, infamous or otherwise, and in seeing other more innocuous items given a sinister cast in the context of their use. But the effect of the exhibits on display was cumulatively shocking. They presented a dreadful picture of ruthlessness, greed, cruelty, lust, envy and hate, of mans inhumanity to man and especially to women. There was nothing of kindness or consideration. There was no nobility, save that of the policemen murdered on duty. There was very little mercy. But the museum made me realise what a policeman must endure in the course of his duty: what sights he sees, what dangers he faces, what depraved and evil people he has to deal with so that others may live secure. The museum also made me curious to know more about the people whose stories were shadowed by the exhibits on display.

This book deals with a very few of the murders investigated by the officers of the Metropolitan Police between 1875 and 1975. This hundred-year period embraces many of the major murder cases in the history of Scotland Yard as well as the major advances in crime detection. The museum has some exhibits relating to murders before 1875 (notably a letter written by the poisoner William Palmer) and several associated with murders after 1975 (notably the murder of Lesley Whittle by Donald Neilson in 1975 and the murders of Dennis Nilsen a few years later). But, writing in 1982, I felt that the grief suffered by families whose relatives had been murdered after 1975 was too recent to be revived by a detailed account. The murder that ends this book, that of Mrs Muriel McKay, seemed a fitting conclusion to the whole sequence, having been more publicised than most and being in many ways extraordinary.

The accounts of these particular murders of the Black Museum have been dealt with as case histories, with an emphasis on factual, social and historical detail, and on the characters and backgrounds of both the victim and the killer. Principal sources are listed at the back of the book, but in the main, statements and court proceedings have formed the basis for each story. No dialogue has been invented; it has been reproduced from statements and evidence given by the murderer as well as by witnesses and the police. What was said or alleged at the time by those most closely involved in a murder case may not always be true, but it is, I feel, of paramount importance in understanding the events that lead up to an act of murder and the complex motives and personalities of those most closely concerned. Like the superintendent or inspector in charge of a case I have tried to find out exactly what happened and why. It is my impression that the police officers investigating a murder ultimately have a clearer understanding of character, method and motive than some of the lawyers who take part in the ensuing trial. A court of law is seldom a place where the whole truth is told or revealed. It is in some respects a theatre of deception, with witnesses, defendants and barristers seeking to deceive the jury and each other. Even the judge, the arbitrator of truth, can mislead and be misled through ignorance or bias. But in a police station, although a suspect may lie as much as he likes, a truer picture of events and character is more likely to be attained in the end. Police reports concerning a murder and sent to a chief constable or commissioner are most sensible, lucid presentations of comment and fact. It is a pity they are not also available to the members of a jury in a court of law.