THE BLACK MUSEUM.
Outside Scotland Yard they call it the "Black Museum"; within, it is
simply the "Museum"--a private museum the like of which exists nowhere
else in the world. Money cannot purchase access to it, and curious
visitors are only admitted on orders signed by senior executive
officials who know them personally. For the museum contains too many of
the secrets of crime to be a wholesome place for the general public,
although the indiscriminate publicity that it has suffered in print has
made it appear to be a kind of gratuitous show-place. If that were its
only purpose, it would not exist at Scotland Yard.
It was originally established, some forty years ago, in a cellar of Old
Scotland Yard, as a place where young police officers might get an
elementary acquaintance of the ways and appliances of evil-doers.
Gradually relics of great crimes began to accumulate there until there
are now over six hundred exhibits, ranging over the whole gamut of
criminal activity. There is much, perhaps too much, to appeal to the
morbid-minded--revolvers by the score, wicked-looking blood-stained
knives, hangmen's ropes, plaster casts of murderers taken after death;
but more interesting are the tools and equipment of the professional
thief and swindler, by which demonstrations are made to raw policemen
of the weapons with which his adversaries wage their war upon society.
In one case it is an innocent-looking ring, now palpably tarnished
brass. But examine it, and you will find that it bears a tolerable
imitation of an eighteen-carat hall-mark. When it was fine and bright it
was picked up in the street, very ostentatiously, by an astute gentleman
who promptly sold it for as much as he could get from a passer-by, who
had probably thought it a bargain when he noticed the forged hall-mark.
That same trick flourishes to-day, as it flourished over a century ago
when Sir John Fielding issued a warning to the public.
Close by are a little heap of white sapphires, calculated at one time,
with their glitter and dazzle when set as "diamond" rings, to deceive
all but the most sophisticated of pawnbrokers. Similarly so,
"field-glasses" stamped with the names of famous makers. These are
little things, perhaps, but they give the most trusting of young
constables some ideas of "ways that are dark and tricks that are vain."
Publicans and pawnbrokers seem to be the invariable victims of a certain
type of swindler. There is a walking-stick, innocent enough to all
appearance, but with a tong-like attachment which, at the touch of a
spring, will jump out of the ferrule, enabling a wineglass full of coins
to be lifted from a shelf across the counter.
A glazed black bag with hinged bottom, which may be placed over any
article and automatically swallow it is another ingenious invention.
All these, however, are byways of crime. There is much more to be
absorbed by the learner in police science. Here he is shown the
different types of jemmies, and bars of steel so fashioned that they may
be used as chisels or levers. Here are bunches of skeleton keys which,
in the hands of experts, will open any ordinary lock in the world. A
massive steel implement shaped like a gigantic tin-opener, and used to
rip open the backs of safes, is another item in the collection. There
are vice-like tweezers which, when properly screwed up, will cut quietly
through the bolts of, say, a jeweller's shutters.
Still more scientific is a complicated apparatus with tubes in which
oxygen and acetylene gas are used to melt through safes with a fierce
heat--a quieter, less clumsy, and more effective method than the use of
explosives.
It would take more space than is at my command to detail all the
practical instruction which is afforded by the object lessons the young
constable has in the museum. Not only is he initiated into wrinkles and
tricks which he may meet any day, but he is shown into those more subtle
branches of crime which few but specialists enter.
Coining is a case in point. There is a complete coiner's outfit--which,
for obvious reasons, I shall not describe--and the process is explained
from A to Z. Now-a-days the "smasher" is a difficult individual to
circumvent. He works preferably with real silver, and with coins like
sixpences and shillings which are not so closely scrutinised as those of
higher denominations. Of course, even in a genuine sixpence the silver
is not worth its face value.
A step higher in the criminal hierarchy is the forger. Of his
handicraft, specimens are not lacking. There are relics seized when a
notorious forger went into forced seclusion for ten years some time ago.
He manufactured Bank of France thousand-franc notes and foreign bonds,
and even used lithographic stones to imitate the water-mark. Photography
played an important part in his operations.
I have shown, sketchily perhaps, how the primary function of the museum
is carried out. But it has another and allied interest of great
importance to all interested in police science.
One may study the stages by which the professional criminal has adapted
the work of invention to his ends, and mark at the same time how the
swindler always strikes the same old chord of credulity in human nature.
Dropped in one of the corners is a heavy bar of brass, originally in the
possession of an early gold-brick swindler. Mr. Albert Blair Hunter, of
Wilmington, Delaware, U.S.A., communicated with two gentlemen in this
country, stating that a wealthy relative had died possessed of
considerable property, among which was a box of gold from Klondike,
value L12,000. For various plausible reasons he was willing to dispose
of it to them for L2,000. The good, simple-minded souls went to New
York, and handed solid English money to that amount over to Mr. Albert
Blair Hunter, of Wilmington, Delaware, U.S.A. For what? A bar of brass
worth perhaps twenty shillings sterling.
Gambling swindles are numerous, seized for the most part on
race-courses. A little tee-to-tum, marked with dice faces, can be
manipulated so as to fall high or low, according to the betting,
irrespective of the person who holds it, so long as he does not know the
secret. There is a board with a dial face and a pointer on a print. The
luckless "punters" cannot tell that it is controlled by a magnetic ring.
Into these mysteries the police are initiated.
The policy of education at the museum is a wise one, for many young
constables, whatever their natural abilities, come fresh to London from
the plough, and no more reliable method of destroying a too trustful
faith in appearances could have been devised than this which shows them
the actual equipment of criminals.
I have deliberately avoided giving too close a description of these
things. Nor have I in any way given a complete description of the
museum.
The mere manuscript catalogue occupies two portly volumes. Each of the
relics contains a story in itself,--a story that has often ended in a
shameful death. To recall them would be beyond the scope of this book.