The original radio program was reissued in an audiobook format by Heritage Media.
The Black Museum was a radio crime-drama program produced by Harry Towers in London. It was broadcast in Europe on Radio Luxembourg, a commercial radio station, and was not broadcast by the BBC until 1991.
In 1946 Harry Towers and his mother, Margaret Miller Towers, started a company called Towers of London that sold various syndicated radio shows around the world, including The Lives of Harry Lime with Orson Welles, The Secrets of Scotland Yard with Clive Brook, Horatio Hornblower with Michael Redgrave, and a series of Sherlock Holmes stories featuring John Gielgud as Holmes, Ralph Richardson as Watson and Welles as Moriarty.[1]
- CRIME RELATED EXHIBITS. For over 140 years the Metropolitan Police Crime Museum has been amassing thousands of items linked to crime and criminals. Visitors have been able to view a selection of items that relate to crimes as diverse as those of Jack the Ripper, the Acid Bath murders, the Great Train Robbery and the Kray Twins.
- The museum is a dedicated to the history of the East London in the 1880s, providing a serious examination of the crimes of Jack the Ripper within the social context of the period. For the first time it tells the story of the man known as 'Jack the Ripper' from the.
- In September a book by Russell Edwards, Naming Jack the Ripper, appeared to great fanfare. In an article in the Mail on Sunday, the author said: 'we have finally solved the mystery of who Jack the Ripper was we have unmasked him.' Solving the mystery of Jack the Ripper is a big claim – but seldom have so many words been written.
The Black Museum was based on real-life cases from the files of Scotland Yard's Black Museum. The program was transcribed in 1951 and was broadcast in the United States in 1952 on Mutual.[2] More than 500 of the network's stations carried it.[3] Ira Marion was the scriptwriter, and music for the series was composed and conducted by Sidney Torch.
Orson Welles was both host and narrator for stories of horror and mystery, based on Scotland Yard's collection of murder weapons and various ordinary objects once associated with historical true crime cases. The show's opening began:
Dec 26, 2019 Consider using a Jack the Ripper Museum membership card, a lot of special offers are prepared for ther members. Join Jack the Ripper Museum Newsletter subscribtion and waitting for their amazing deals; Now and then Jack the Ripper Museum publish some Discount Code, the maximum discount recently is up to 45% OFF.
- This is Orson Welles, speaking from London.
- (Sound of Big Ben chimes)
- The Black Museum.. a repository of death. Here in the grim stone structure on the Thames which houses Scotland Yard is a warehouse of homicide, where everyday objects.. a woman’s shoe, a tiny white box, a quilted robe.. all are touched by murder.
In 2002, Towers produced The Black Museum for television and hired director Gregory Mackenzie to be the showrunner and director for the anthology series using the original narration by Welles. The adaptation was shot on location in London in a film noir style and the pilot stars Michael York as the Scotland Yard Inspector Russel.
Programme format and themes[edit]
Walking through the museum, Welles would pause at one of the exhibits, and his description of an artifact served as a device to lead into a wryly-narrated dramatised tale of a brutal murder or a vicious crime. In the closing: 'Now until we meet again in the same place and I tell you another tale of the Black Museum', Welles would conclude with his signature radio phrase, 'I remain, as always, obediently yours'.
With the story themes deriving from objects in the collection (usually with the names of the people involved changed but the facts remaining true to history), the 51 episodes had such titles as 'The Tartan Scarf' and 'A Piece of Iron Chain' or 'Frosted Glass Shards' and 'A Khaki Handkerchief'. An anomaly to the series was an episode called 'The Letter' as this was the only story not about murder, but about forgery.
Broadcast history[edit]
In the United States, the series aired on the Mutual Network in 1952.[2] It was rebroadcast on KABC, Los Angeles, California, in 1963–1964[4] and on KUAC (FM) in Fairbanks, Alaska, in 1967.[5]
Beginning May 7, 1953, it was also broadcast over Radio Luxembourg sponsored by the cleaning products Dreft and Mirro. Since the BBC carried no commercials, Radio Luxembourg aired sponsored programs at night to England.
In the United States, there was a contemporary programme called Whitehall 1212 written and directed by Wyllis Cooper and broadcast by NBC, that was similar in scope to The Black Museum. It was hosted by Chief Superintendent John Davidson, curator of the Black Museum. It used many of the same picked cases as The Black Museum, and it nearly mirrored its broadcast run. The two shows were different in the respect that while Whitehall 1212 told the story of a case entirely from the point of view of the police starting from the crime scene, The Black Museum was more heavily dramatized and played out scenes of the actual murders and included scenes from the criminal's point of view.[6]
Episodes[edit]
The following episodes were broadcast:[7]
- Black Museum – 01 The .22 Caliber Pistol AKA Little Blue 22
- Black Museum – 02 .32 Calibre Bullet
- Black Museum – 03 Bath Tub
- Black Museum – 04 The Black Gladstone Bag
- Black Museum – 05 The Brick
- Black Museum – 06 The Brass Button
- Black Museum – 07 Can of Weed Killer
- Black Museum – 08 Canvas Bag
- Black Museum – 09 The Car Tire
- Black Museum – 10 The Champagne Glass
- Black Museum – 11 A Claw Hammer
- Black Museum – 12 Door Key
- Black Museum – 13 Faded Tartan Scarf AKA The Yellow Scarf
- Black Museum – 14 Four Small Bottles
- Black Museum – 15 French–English Dictionary
- Black Museum – 16 Gas Receipt
- Black Museum – 17 Frosted Glass Shards
- Black Museum – 18 The Hammerhead
- Black Museum – 19 The Jack Handle
- Black Museum – 20 Jar of Acid
- Black Museum – 21 The Khaki Handkerchief
- Black Museum – 22 A Lady's Shoe
- Black Museum – 23 The Leather Bag
- Black Museum – 24 A Letter
- Black Museum – 25 The Mandolin String
- Black Museum – 26 Meat Juice
- Black Museum – 27 The Notes
- Black Museum – 28 The Old Wooden Mallet
- Black Museum – 29 The Open End Wrench
- Black Museum – 30 A Pair Of Spectacles
- Black Museum – 31 A Piece Of Iron Chain
- Black Museum – 32 The Pink Powderpuff
- Black Museum – 33 Post Card With Picture Of The Rising Sun
- Black Museum – 34 A Prescription
- Black Museum – 35 The Raincoat
- Black Museum – 36 Length of Sash Cord
- Black Museum – 37 Auto Service Card
- Black Museum – 38 The Sheath Knife
- Black Museum – 39 The Shopping Bag
- Black Museum – 40 Shilling
- Black Museum – 41 A Silencer
- Black Museum – 42 The Small White Boxes
- Black Museum – 43 The Spotted Bedsheet
- Black Museum – 44 The Straight Razor
- Black Museum – 45 The Tan Shoe
- Black Museum – 46 The Telegram
- Black Museum – 47 The Trunk
- Black Museum – 48 Two Bullets
- Black Museum – 49 Walking Stick
- Black Museum – 50 A Women's Pigskin Glove
- Black Museum – 51 The Wool Jacket
Cases[edit]
![Jack Jack](/uploads/1/2/5/2/125201420/199786733.jpg)
Based on original research and comparisons of the episode plot with the facts of the actual case, the below-listed Metropolitan Police cases were probably used as the basis for episodes of The Black Museum:
- Thomas Henry Allaway – 'The Telegram'
- Major Herbert Rowse Armstrong – 'The Champagne Glass'
- Elvira Dolores Barney – 'The .22 Caliber Pistol'
- Adelaide Bartlett – '4 Small Bottles'
- Frederick Browne & William Kennedy – 'The Car Tire' & 'The Gas Receipt'
- James Camb – 'The Spotted Bedsheet'
- George Chapman – 'The Straight Razor'
- Christopher Craig & Derek Bentley –'Two Bullets'
- John Alexander Dickman – 'The Tan Shoe' & 'The Leather Bag'
- Samuel Herbert Dougal – 'The Lady's Shoe'
- Miles Giffard – 'The Service Card'
- Harold Greenwood – 'Weed Killer'
- John George Haigh – 'The Jar of Acid'
- Neville Heath – 'The Powder Puff'
- Harold Hill – 'The Khaki Handkerchief'
- Karl Hulton & Elizabeth Jones – 'The Jack Handle'
- Charles Jenkins, Christopher Geraghty & Terence Rolt – 'The .32 Caliber Bullet'[1], [2]
- Patrick Mahon – 'The Gladstone Bag'
- Toni Mancini – 'The Hammerhead'
- Florence Maybrick – 'Meat Juice'
- William Henry Podmore – 'The Receipt'
- Dr. Edward Pritchard – 'The Walking Stick'
- Florence Ransom – 'A Woman's Pigskin Glove'
- John Robinson – 'The Trunk'
- Alfred Arthur Rouse – 'The Mallet'
- Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters – 'The Sheath Knife'
- August Sangret – 'The Brass Button'
- James Townsend Saward (alias 'Jim the Penman') – 'The Letter'
- Henry Daniel Seymour – 'The Claw Hammer'
- George Joseph Smith – 'The Bath Tub'
- Madeleine Smith – 'Small White Boxes'
- Frederick Stewart – 'The Frosted Glass Shards'
- George Stoner – 'The Brickbat'
- Norman Thorne – 'The Wool Jacket' & 'The Spectacles'
- Jean–Pierre Vaquier – 'The Dictionary'
- Nurse Dorothea Waddingham – 'The Prescription'
- William Herbert Wallace – 'The Raincoat'
- Robert Wood – 'The Postcard'
Episodes yet to be matched with true case histories are:[original research?]
- The Canvas Bag
- The Door Key
- The Faded Tartan Scarf
- The Iron Chain, Piece of
- The Mandolin String
- Notes – Kilroy was Here
- The Open End Wrench
- The Sash Cord, Length of
- The Shilling
- The Shopping Bag
- The Silencer
Relationships and differences with source material[edit]
- Two episodes, 'The Car Tire' and 'The Gas Receipt,' were the same story with minor differences between the two. Another pair of episodes, 'The Baby's Jacket' and 'The Spectacles,' were also based on the same case, as were 'The Tan Shoe' and 'The Leather Bag.'
- Four famous murder cases were dramatized on The Black Museum: John George Haigh, the 'Acid Bath Murderer'; George Joseph Smith, the 'Brides in the Bath Murderer'; Adelaide Bartlett, whose husband died from chloroform poisoning; and Florence Maybrick, who allegedly used arsenic from fly-paper to murder her husband James Maybrick (who was suspected of being Jack the Ripper due to the 1993 publication of The Diary of Jack the Ripper).
- In 'The Open End Wrench' it's mistakenly stated that the culprit was executed in Dartmoor. No twentieth-century executions were carried out in Dartmoor. Built during the Napoleonic Wars to contain French and American POWs, it was, after lying idle from 1815 to 1850, later commissioned as a convict prison and used for dangerous long-term prisoners only.
- The dramatized story of 'The Hammerhead' was changed to make the victim's sister the murderer instead of the boy friend.
- The episode 'Small White Boxes' is the only story in which the real names were used rather than pseudonyms.
See also[edit]
Notes[edit]
- ^'Harry Alan Towers obituary'. September 30, 2009. Retrieved March 21, 2017.
- ^ abDunning, John (1998). On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio (Revised ed.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. p. 95. ISBN978-0-19-507678-3. Retrieved 2019-11-04.
The Black Museum, crime drama.
- ^Sullivan, Ed (December 17, 1951). 'Little Old New York'. The Morning Herald. p. 4. Retrieved May 4, 2015 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^'Radio Drama'(PDF). Broadcasting. August 19, 1963. p. 62. Retrieved 4 May 2015.[permanent dead link]
- ^'KUAC Brings Back Old Days With 'The Black Museum''. Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. January 10, 1967. p. 5. Retrieved May 4, 2015 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^Dunning 1998, p. 721.
- ^https://archive.org/details/OTRR_Black_Museum_Singles
References[edit]
- Browne, Douglas; Tullett, Tom (1951), Bernard Spilsbury, Grafton Books, London, ISBN0-586-05574-6
- Dunning, John (1998), On the air: the encyclopedia of old-time radio (2 ed.), Oxford University Press, p. 721, ISBN978-0-19-507678-3
- Fido, Martin (1986), The Murder Guide to London, Grafton Books, London, ISBN0-586-07179-2
- Simpson, Keith (1978), Forty Years of Murder, Grafton Books, London, ISBN0-586-05038-8
- Tullet, Tom (1979), Murder Squad: Famous Cases of Scotland Yard's Murder Squad from Crippen to The Black Panther, Granada Publishing Ltd., London, ISBN0-586-05218-6
External links[edit]
- Listen to
- The Black Museum in the Internet Archive's Old-Time Radio Collection
Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Black_Museum&oldid=933898938'
(Redirected from Black Museum)
The Crime Museum in its former home at New Scotland Yard, 8-10 Broadway (now demolished)
The Crime Museum is a collection of criminalmemorabilia kept at New Scotland Yard, headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Service in London, England. The museum came into existence sometime in 1874, although unofficially, and until recently was known as the Black Museum. It was housed at Scotland Yard, and grew from the collection of prisoners' property gathered under the authority of the Prisoners' Property Act 1869. The act was intended to help the police in their study of crime and criminals. By 1875, it had become an official museum, although not open to the public, with a police inspector and a police constable assigned to official duty there.
Now sited in the basement of the Curtis Green Building (the present New Scotland Yard), the museum remains closed to the public but can be visited by officers of the Metropolitan Police and any of the country's police forces by prior appointment. A major exhibition of artefacts from the museum, The Crime Museum Uncovered, was held at the Museum of London from 9 October 2015 to 10 April 2016.[1] Though this was the only time a large number of exhibits have been displayed to the public, individual objects have been loaned to other exhibitions, such as a cigarette lighter with a hidden compartment from the Krogers at the Science Museum in 2019-2020[2].
- 2Collections
History[edit]
The concept of the Black Museum was conceived in 1874 by 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. Prior to an Act of 1869, items used in the commission of a crime were retained by police until their owners had reclaimed them, but this 1869 Act gave authority for police to either destroy these items, or retain them for instructional purposes.[3] By the latter part of 1874, official authority was given for a crime museum to be opened.[4]
The founding Inspector Neame,[5] with the help of a P.C. 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 actual date in 1875 when the Black Museum opened is not known, but the permanent appointment of Neame and Randall to duty in the Prisoners Property Store on 12 April suggests that the museum may have come into being in the latter part of that year.[6]
There was no official opening of the museum, and two years elapsed before a record of the first visitors was recorded. This was on 6 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.
Blackjack what is soft and hard. Soft 19 calls for doubling in H17 games only when the dealer is at their most vulnerable with a 6. You should double on soft 18 when playing against an H17 dealer with small upcards 2 through 6. Without these strategy adjustments, you will fail to reduce the house edge. The Frequency of Occurrence of Hard and Soft HandsGambling expert Henry Tamburin tells us there are 34 hands you can receive at the start of a betting round.
In 1877 the name 'Black Museum' was coined, when on 8 April a reporter from The Observer newspaper used the term after being refused a visit by Inspector Neame. In 1890 the museum moved with the Metropolitan Police Office to new premises at the other end of Whitehall,[7] 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 War I and II, and in 1967, with the move of New Scotland Yard to new premises in Victoria Street, S.W.1, the museum was housed in rooms on the second floor, which underwent several renovations.
Early in the 21st century the Museum was renamed the Crime Museum and moved to the basement of the newly refurbished and extended Curtis Green Building. From 2005 until 2009 the museum was curated by Maggie bird. It reopened in 2018 in a 'dark and dramatic' room designed by Allford Hall Monaghan Morris in collaboration with engineering consultancy Arup[8][9][10].
Collections[edit]
The From Hell letter, allegedly from Jack the Ripper
The museum contains historic collections and more recent artefacts, including a substantial collection of melee weapons, some overt, some concealed all of which have been used in murders or serious assaults in London, these include shotguns disguised as umbrellas and numerous walking stick swords. The museum also contains a selection of hangman's nooses, including that used to perform the UK's last-ever execution and death masks made for executed criminals. There are also displays from famous cases which include Charlie Peace and letters allegedly written by Jack the Ripper.
The more recent exhibits on display include the ricin-filled pellet that killed Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov in 1978, a model of the possible umbrella that fired the pellet, the fake De Beers diamond from the Millennium Dome heist and Dennis Nilsen's actual stove.
Other items no longer on public display include items that once belonged to Charles Black, the most prolific counterfeiter in the Western Hemisphere. These include a set of printing plates, a remarkable series of forged banknotes, and a cunningly hollowed-out kitchen door once used to conceal them.
The museum hosts more than 500 exhibits; each preserved at a constant temperature of sixty-two degrees Fahrenheit.[11]
Cases on display[edit]
- Udham Singh was an Indian revolutionary who shot and killed Michael O'Dwyer, the former Lieutenant Governor of the Punjab in British India
- Ruth Ellis was the last woman to be executed in the United Kingdom, after being convicted of the murder of her lover, David Blakely.
- John Reginald Halliday Christie was a notorious English serial killer active in the 1940s and early 1950s[12]
- Stratton Brothers case refers to the Stratton Brothers who were the first men to be convicted in Great Britain for murder based on fingerprint evidence[13]
- John George Haigh was an English serial killer, active between 1944 and 1949[14]
- Neville Heath, an English killer who was responsible for the murders of at least two young women, and who was executed in London in 1946
- Dennis Nilsen, a serial killer and necrophiliac, also known as the Muswell Hill Murderer and the Kindly Killer, who committed the murders of 15 young men in London, England
- Thomas Neill Cream, also known as the Lambeth Poisoner, was a Scottish-born serial killer[15]
- The overalls of P.C. Keith Blakelock, who was stabbed to death in the Broadwater Farm housing estate in 1985, are kept in the Black Museum. Several people have been charged with his murder but acquitted. The Met continues to pursue others involved in his murder[16]
- A cast of the hole drilled into the vault wall during the Hatton Garden safe deposit burglary is on display. During the long weekend of Easter Bank Holiday in April 2015, four thieves burgled deposit boxes with a value up to £200 million[17]
In other media[edit]
Jack The Ripper London
![Black museum jack the ripper youtube Black museum jack the ripper youtube](/uploads/1/2/5/2/125201420/423763403.jpg)
In 1951 British commercial radio producer Harry Alan Towers produced a radio series hosted by Orson Welles called The Black Museum, inspired by the catalogue of items on display. Each week, the programme featured an item from the museum and a dramatization of the story surrounding the object to the macabre delight of audiences. Often mistakenly cited as a BBC production, Towers commercially syndicated the programme throughout the English-speaking world. 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, the program debuted on 18 November 1951, and was hosted by Chief Superintendent John Davidson, curator of the Black Museum.
- There is a fictional Black Museum, inspired by the actual one, inside the Grand Hall of Justice in the Judge Dredd comic strip.
- A fictional version of the Black Museum is often referred to in the Dylan Dog comic series and, in some stories, exhibits are stolen from the museum.
- In the 1944 film The Lodger, Inspector Warwick (George Sanders) gives a tour of the museum to Kitty Langley (Merle Oberon).
- A 1958 horror film called Horrors of the Black Museum references the Black Museum in a story of a crime writer (played by Michael Gough) who commits grisly murders in order to write articles and books about them for public consumption.
- The fourth series of Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror has an episode called 'Black Museum'.
- Tony Parsons wrote about the Black Museum in his books about detective Max Wolfe.
- A radio drama series featuring Orson Welles was produced and aired in 1952-53, with some episodes loosely based on real cases.
References[edit]
- ^'Scotland Yard's Crime Museum Opens to Public for First Time in 140 Years, NBC News, 22 November 2015'.
- ^'Spies reveal life on the front line in new Science Museum exhibition, Express Digest, July 2019'.
- ^Waddell 1993, p. 4.
- ^Waddell 1993, pp. 5-7.
- ^Schulz, Dorothy Moses M.; Haberfeld, Dr. Maria (Maki) R.; Sullivan, Larry E.; Rosen, Marie Simonetti (2005). Encyclopedia of Law Enforcement. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, Inc. p. 348.
- ^The Black MuseumISBN978-0-316-90332-5 pp. 5-6
- ^The Murders of the Black MuseumISBN978-1-85471160-1 p. 13
- ^'A new Crime Museum for the Metropolitan Police'. www.ahmm.co.uk. Retrieved 13 June 2019.
- ^'New Scotland Yard AHMM - ALLFORD HALL MONAGHAN MORRIS'. www.ahmm.co.uk. Retrieved 13 June 2019.
- ^'How the New Scotland Yard is a symbol of strength and resilience'. Evening Standard. 23 March 2017. Retrieved 13 June 2019.
- ^'Murder Weapons, Death Masks, and Severed Arms: A Glimpse Inside London's Black Museum'. 6 June 2018.
- ^The Black MuseumISBN978-0-316-90332-5 p. 171
- ^The Black MuseumISBN978-0-316-90332-5 p. 171
- ^The Black MuseumISBN978-0-316-90332-5 p. 161
- ^The Black MuseumISBN978-0-316-90332-5 p. 84
- ^'DNA test for Blakelock's uniform', BBC News, 3 October 2004.
- ^'How was the £200 million Hatton Garden jewellery heist pulled off?'. The Independent. 9 April 2015. Retrieved 4 April 2019.
Cited works and further reading[edit]
Who Was Jack The Ripper
- Honeycombe, Gordon (1982). The Murders of the Black Museum: 1870:1970. Bloomsbury Books. ISBN978-1-85471160-1.
- Ohmart, Ben (2002). It's That Time Again. Albany & Bear Manor Media. ISBN0-9714570-2-6.
- Waddell, Bill (1993). The Black Museum: New Scotland Yard. Little, Brown and Company. ISBN978-0-316-90332-5.
External links[edit]
- New Scotland Yard's Black Museum tour on DVD (archived)
- Friends' statement (archived)
Coordinates: 51°30′10″N0°7′27″W / 51.50278°N 0.12417°W
Black Museum Jack The Ripper Movie
Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Crime_Museum&oldid=933884716'