Metropolitan Police Museum and Crime Museum
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mpsheritage.bsky.social
Metropolitan Police Museum and Crime Museum
@mpsheritage.bsky.social
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Metropolitan Police lives and stories 1829-now.

Open to researchers and visitors by appointment.

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mpsheritage.bsky.social
Metropolitan Police Museum and Crime Museum @mpsheritage.bsky.social · 4d
January tickets to our #CM150 exhibition are being snapped up quickly, but everyone seems to be too busy with Christmas shopping for the December ones. There's still good availability on 9-11 & 17 at www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/metropolit... if the #truecrime fan in your life needs an early present ...
Metropolitan Police Museum Gallery Tour
Visit us to learn more about the history of the Metropolitan Police at our Special Exhibition: 150 Years of The Crime Museum
www.eventbrite.co.uk
mpsheritage.bsky.social
Despite being called a museum, we estimate that 60-70% of our collection is in fact books and archive. We are one of two archives of Met history, the other being the National Archives, which took all Met central records until 2000. #ExploreYourArchive #EYAYourArchive
Two men in overalls up tall ladders in a corridor and one consulting a box of records on a trolley. Behind the ladders is floor-to-ceiling shelving containing tied bundles of records.
December 7, 2025 at 11:40 AM
mpsheritage.bsky.social
Gonzo for Inspector Bucket!
phdhurtbrain.bsky.social Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 3d
*trailer voice

This Christmas, Disney brings you a new muppets holiday classic from the pen of Charles Dickens, MUPPETS BLEAK HOUSE
December 6, 2025 at 12:26 PM
mpsheritage.bsky.social
Our current #CM150 exhibition at Sidcup marks 150 years of the Crime Museum collection, whilst its successor next year will mark the 125th anniversary of Assistant Commissioner Edward Henry's formation of the Met's Fingerprint Bureau on 1 July 1901. #EYAanniversaries #ExploreYourArchive
Courtroom sketch by William Hartley of a seated Edward Henry, his walrus moustache protruding above an opened case, possibly a portable writing case. An inscription below reads 'SIR EDW. HENRY WATCHES FO[R] THE POLICE', meaning it probably shows him at the January 1913 trial of his would-be assassin Alfred Bowes - he pleaded for mercy for him and paid for his passage to Canada after his release from prison in 1922.
December 6, 2025 at 11:40 AM
mpsheritage.bsky.social
#EYADigital #ExploreYourArchive
mpsheritage.bsky.social Metropolitan Police Museum and Crime Museum @mpsheritage.bsky.social · 11d
Available in over 50 other languages besides UK/US English, our new Bloomberg Connects guide (tinyurl.com/mtn6yzrr or via their app) has already been accessed by nearly 400 people. It is due to be in use in our gallery space from January 2026 onwards. #Museum30 #achievement
Two wax seal impressions sealing a piece of pink ribbon to a square of brown card. At the top of the card is typed 'SEAL OF THE TRANSVAAL GOVERNMENT WHICH WAS PUT ON THE SAFE IN THIS OFFICE CONTAINING THE CULLINAN DIAMOND PRESENTED TO HIS MAJESTY THE KING BY THE PEOPLE OF THE TRANSVAAL. THE DIAMOND WAS STORED HERE FOR THREE MONTHS. 28/1/8'. This relates to the Cullinan Diamond, discovered by the colonial Transvaal Company in South Africa in 1905 and shipped to London. It is both on show in the in-person #CM150 exhibition in our gallery and on our Bloomberg Connects guide - the only object in the exhibition to relate to crime prevention and not a crime! Having failed to find a buyer for the diamond, the Company gave it to King Edward VII as a birthday gift. When he got it out of the safe at New Scotland Yard, he had it cut down in Amsterdam (with a whole Royal Navy ship sailing there as a decoy). It produced nine major diamonds, of which two are now in the Sovereign's Sceptre and Imperial State Crown in the Crown Jewels.
December 4, 2025 at 1:01 PM
mpsheritage.bsky.social
January tickets to our #CM150 exhibition are being snapped up quickly, but everyone seems to be too busy with Christmas shopping for the December ones. There's still good availability on 9-11 & 17 at www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/metropolit... if the #truecrime fan in your life needs an early present ...
Metropolitan Police Museum Gallery Tour
Visit us to learn more about the history of the Metropolitan Police at our Special Exhibition: 150 Years of The Crime Museum
www.eventbrite.co.uk
December 4, 2025 at 11:57 AM
mpsheritage.bsky.social
Welcome to the azure skies @dcpolmuseum.bsky.social !
December 4, 2025 at 10:21 AM
mpsheritage.bsky.social
#OnThisDay in 1892 eight people visited the Crime Museum in the newly-opened New Scotland Yard by the Thames. They included three authors - Arthur Conan Doyle, his soon-to-be-brother-in-law E. W. Hornung, and Jerome K Jerome. #OTD #OnThisDayInHistory #Sherlock #ConanDoyle #Elementary #CM150
Eight lines in a visitor book, all with the date 2 December 1892. Each person has signed their name and given their address. This page is on display in our #CM150 exhibition at Sidcup until April 2026. Hornung had been a journalist in Whitechapel during the murders there and later wrote the Raffles novels on a gentleman thief, whereas Jerome (best-known for 'Three Men in a Boat') probably got far less inspiration from the collection ...
December 2, 2025 at 1:49 PM
mpsheritage.bsky.social
One of the earliest Scottish Met PCs was John Bissett, born in St Andrews. He joined on 28 November 1831 and rose to Sergeant on Lambeth division until sickness forced him to retire on 18 January 1854. He was buried in Battersea in 1872. #StAndrewsDay #SaintAndrewsDay
The front cover of Bissett's entry in the Met pension registers at the National Archives, showing his final rank and division, the reason for and date of his departure, and the value of his pension (£38 a year, worth £4111 today). It is signed by James Evans, then head of L Division.
November 30, 2025 at 4:35 PM
mpsheritage.bsky.social
#OnThisDay in 1949 Timothy Evans reported to the police in south Wales that his wife Beryl had died after drinking an abortion drug at 10 Rillington Place in Ladbroke Grove on 8 November. That case and John Christie's murders at the same address both feature in our #CM150 exhibition #OTD
Telegram to the Chief Superintendent at Notting Hill police station passing on the telephone message from the Merthyr Tydfil police about Evans' initial confession. It adds that he disposed of the body down a manhole (which Met officers discovered to have been impossible) and had left his 14-month-old daughter Geraldine in John Christie's care. The telegram is in Evans' Criminal Record Office file, which is still in our collections. Beryl's body was discovered beside that of Geraldine on 2 December. Evans was executed for the latter murder but that conviction was found to be unsafe in 1965 and a posthumous pardon followed.
November 30, 2025 at 4:14 PM
mpsheritage.bsky.social
Why police and crime museums? Because those two topics intersect with all other aspects of history - gender, sexuality, class, race, technology, faith, war ...
#Museum30 #WhyMuseums #WhyMuseums? #womenshistory
Painting from our collection of a Woman Police Sergeant in the 1919-1931 women's uniform, surrounded by children and pigeons. In the background are one of the Trafalgar Square lions and the central façade of the National Gallery.
November 30, 2025 at 1:01 PM
mpsheritage.bsky.social
#OnThisDay in 1876 civil engineer Arthur Dyson was murdered in Whalley Range, Manchester by serial burglar Charlie Peace, who was stalking Dyson's wife Katharine. He was convicted of that murder in 1879 after being captured by Met PC Edward Robinson in Blackheath. #OTD #OnThisDayInHistory #Movember
Newspaper sketch of PC Robinson in a greatcoat and Met helmet, the chinstrap in front of his full beard and large moustache. His collar number 202R can be seen. At top left the inscription 'CONSTABLE ROBINSON. AN HONOUR TO THE FORCE.'.
November 29, 2025 at 3:00 PM
mpsheritage.bsky.social
London's river police was merged into the Met in 1839. Its beat has always included the stretch of the Thames bordering the City of London even though on land that area has its own police service, while City officers police Tower Bridge despite both its ends being on Met territory! #water #Museum30
Colour photograph of a Met boat with a blue hull and white superstructure in the Pool of London, with Tower Bridge in the background. The launch is named Patrick Colquhoun after the magistrate who first formed the River Police in 1798.
November 29, 2025 at 11:40 AM
mpsheritage.bsky.social
This London bobby crops up between Restoration ladies and Pearly Kings and Queens on a #mural entitled “The History of the Old Kent Road", completed on the North Peckham Civic Centre sixty years ago this year. It is by Adam Kossowski, a Polish refugee from Soviet oppression. #Museum30 #southLondon
A man in a Met helmet and tunic with a high collar with collar number stands with his hands behind his back. To the left is a woman in a Restoration dress and to the right architectural details and the back of a Victorian or Edwardian bus.
November 28, 2025 at 11:44 AM
mpsheritage.bsky.social
Available in over 50 other languages besides UK/US English, our new Bloomberg Connects guide (tinyurl.com/mtn6yzrr or via their app) has already been accessed by nearly 400 people. It is due to be in use in our gallery space from January 2026 onwards. #Museum30 #achievement
Two wax seal impressions sealing a piece of pink ribbon to a square of brown card. At the top of the card is typed 'SEAL OF THE TRANSVAAL GOVERNMENT WHICH WAS PUT ON THE SAFE IN THIS OFFICE CONTAINING THE CULLINAN DIAMOND PRESENTED TO HIS MAJESTY THE KING BY THE PEOPLE OF THE TRANSVAAL. THE DIAMOND WAS STORED HERE FOR THREE MONTHS. 28/1/8'. This relates to the Cullinan Diamond, discovered by the colonial Transvaal Company in South Africa in 1905 and shipped to London. It is both on show in the in-person #CM150 exhibition in our gallery and on our Bloomberg Connects guide - the only object in the exhibition to relate to crime prevention and not a crime! Having failed to find a buyer for the diamond, the Company gave it to King Edward VII as a birthday gift. When he got it out of the safe at New Scotland Yard, he had it cut down in Amsterdam (with a whole Royal Navy ship sailing there as a decoy). It produced nine major diamonds, of which two are now in the Sovereign's Sceptre and Imperial State Crown in the Crown Jewels.
November 27, 2025 at 12:07 PM
mpsheritage.bsky.social
In the forty years since leaving its original site in Bow Street, the Police Museum collection has moved from Charlton to Woolwich to West Brompton to Sidcup. Hopefully our coming years will have considerably less #moving ! #Museum30
Detail from a 1982 advert for "The Metropolitan Police Historical Museum", showing its first curator Marcelle Marceau (right) and its first assistant curator Isabella Bennett, both standing looking at an open ledger, which a mannequin of an 1829 Peeler in his top hat and frock coat photobombs between them in the distance.
November 26, 2025 at 4:21 PM
mpsheritage.bsky.social
The Police Museum holds this copy of the George Medal issued to WPS Ethel Bush for plain-clothes decoy duty against a Croydon sex attacker in 1955 & some of the press coverage of its award at Buckingham Palace, whilst the Crime Museum holds the log used to attack her. #danger #Museum30 #VAWG #CM150
Round silver medal with an image of the young Queen Elizabeth II in a crown, inscribed round the edge "ELIZABETH II DEI GRATIA REGINA F.D." (Elizabeth II, by the grace of God Queen [and] Defender of the Faith). It hangs from a mainly red ribbon with five equidistant narrow light blue stripes. Bush and WPC Kay Parrott were jointly the first women to be awarded the medal, both for decoy duty against the same attacker. Despite severe injuries, they both hold onto him long enough to describe him to a jury and gain his conviction.
November 25, 2025 at 4:08 PM
mpsheritage.bsky.social
For over 80 years the Met's Special Branch called in explosives #specialist s like Vivian Majendie to defuse bombs planted in London rather than doing it themselves. In 1971 this changed when the Met set up its own Bomb Squad to counter the anarchist Angry Brigade campaign. #Museum30 #CM150
Metal box with hinged top placed underneath it to show its contents, namely a large number of large sharp metal fragments. The label (seen upside down on the inside of the lid) states how the device was one of four planted at London mainline railway termini in 1884, in this instance at Paddington.
November 24, 2025 at 3:53 PM
mpsheritage.bsky.social
I believe you mean "see a Metropolitan Police box" ... #ChameleonCircuit #DoctorWho #TARDIS #WibblyWobblyMuseumyWiamy
November 24, 2025 at 9:51 AM
mpsheritage.bsky.social
At Pentonville at 9 am #OnThisDay in 1910 John Ellis executed the murderer of Cora Crippen. That decade he also hanged poisoner Frederick Seddon and Sir Roger Casement, whilst he played an executioner in a drama on the life of Charlie Peace in 1927. #CM150 #OTD #onthisdayinhistory #medhist
Two pages of a tall thin prescription ledger showing medicines issued by Crippen on 24 and 25 January 1894, whilst he was still working as a homeopath in the USA. Cora's torso was found to have been poisoned with the drug hyoscine and so before his trial a British doctor checked this ledger and its pair to ensure Crippen had not also been poisoning people with that chemical in the USA.
November 23, 2025 at 1:00 PM
mpsheritage.bsky.social
Met officers often received a reward for gaining control of runaway horses (and the occasional "infuriated cow") in the streets of Victorian London, but these escaped elephants in 1884 Kentish Town were an altogether rarer occurrence ... #Museum30 #animal
In the right foreground a Met officer in his helmet watches as two elephants are prised out of a cellar. In the background others hold back a crowd as the elephants are led off home.
November 23, 2025 at 10:40 AM
mpsheritage.bsky.social
Our archive, photo and object sides often cross over - for instance, we have both the beat wheels used until around 1930 to measure distance data and the beat maps produced using that data. #walk #Museum30 #blackandwhitephotography
Black and white photograph of a man in Met blue trousers, tunic and peaked forage cap wheels a beat wheel across a station yard, with a police car in the background. The beat wheel is a single wheel with spokes attached to a wooden handle - at the base of a handle is the dial giving the distance data.
November 22, 2025 at 9:15 AM
mpsheritage.bsky.social
Our team of eight have had #careers taking us to the Millennium Dome heist 25 years ago, Impressionists in Cardiff, moving much of the @sciencemuseum.org.uk collection halfway across England, tennis history at Wimbledon and lifeboat history across the UK! #Museum30
The real 'Millennium Star', one of the diamonds targeted in the 2000 raid on the Dome (now the O2). It is shaped like a teardrop and sits on its widest point. A replica is now in the Crime Museum collection.
November 21, 2025 at 1:34 PM
mpsheritage.bsky.social
Pocketbooks were introduced by the Met in 1894. Detective 'Nipper' Read kept his from throughout his career and his family have donated them to our collections - these three are on show in our #CM150 exhibition. #Museum30 #diary #truecrime #KrayTwins #eastLondon
Front covers of three tall thin light brown notebooks. Those on the left and right are labelled with "DET. SUPT READ" (his rank at the time, Detective Superintendent) and date ranges in 1968, whilst the middle one is simply labelled 'McVITIE" (Read's team was able to convict Reggie Kray of Jack McVitie's murder).
November 20, 2025 at 3:31 PM
mpsheritage.bsky.social
These three cases appear at the top of an 1883 Illustrated London News image on display in our #CM150 exhibition - "Prof. Zandevesto's Fortune Telling Machine" is alas no longer in our collection, but the other two cases are. #Museum30 #magic
Line drawing showing the fortune-telling-machine (centre), a box with a strange tube on a stand on top of it. It also shows the pistol fired at Queen Victoria in 1840 (left) and the personal effects of the 'Tichborne Claimant' (right) - the latter are also on show in our #CM150 exhibition.
November 19, 2025 at 8:45 PM
mpsheritage.bsky.social
In the late 19th century other police forces across the UK and the world would send #photograph s like this to the Met, which compiled them into what we've nicknamed our 'big book of criminals'. #Museum30
One page meant to hold nine mugshots on each side. All three in the top row have been removed, revealing the backs of two photographs on the other side with descriptions of the subject and their offences. The middle row shows a man in a boater and two women in elaborate late Victorian hats. The right-hand woman (2072) is 'Chicago May' who also features in our William Hartley courtroom sketches collection. The bottom row of three shows a man showing his hands (since a criminal would find it difficult to discuss if they had lost a finger or thumb) and two dapper gents in bow ties holding chalk boards bearing their names and the date 25 September 1896.
November 18, 2025 at 4:41 PM