Crime Museum

The Crime Museum is a collection of criminal memorabilia kept at New Scotland Yard, headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Service in London, England.

[5] The Black Museum was conceived in 1874 by Percy George Neame, a serving inspector who at that time had collected together a number of items, with the intention of giving police officers practical instruction on how to detect and prevent crime.

Randall, gathered together sufficient material of both old and new cases—initially pertaining to exhibits found in the possession of burglars and thieves—to enable a museum to be subsequently opened.

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.

In June 1902 he committed suicide "by blowing his brains out" when Chief Inspector Arthur Fair and another officer were at his front door, calling in respect of a "few things in his accounts which they could not understand with reference to money seized at gaming houses".

[13] Following the exhibition the museum reopened in 2018 in a "dark and dramatic" room in the basement of the Building designed by Allford Hall Monaghan Morris in collaboration with engineering consultancy Arup.

[27] The American radio writer Wyllis Cooper also wrote and directed a similar anthology for NBC that ran at the same time in the U. S. called Whitehall 1212, for the telephone number of Scotland Yard.