March 2026

The "Black Museum" was a highly restricted venue where police officers could view items which had been used in crimes and learn how to detect their use. Today the Police Museum is more open but there is still a private "Crime Museum". We were lucky to be able to visit the museum in Sidcup which has, for a short time, an exhibition about the history and contents of the Crime Museum.

Our guide walked us around the exhibits in quite a small room - one's first reaction was to wonder if there would be enough to occupy the 90 minute tour, but there was, as we found out 2 hours later!

With very few exceptions, the items on display are all the originals collected as evidence from real murders or serious crimes. The only exceptions were some models used to help solve crimes, a mock up of a suicide bombers backpack as used in the London 7/7 attacks and the Jack the Ripper display (all the original evidence, notes, etc. from Ripper investigation have been destroyed).

Yes, there was a lot of murder to hear about but the back stories were really interesting. Once again one is forced to wonder what makes someone change from a normal, respectable person into a mad criminal or murderer.

Without wishing to denegrate the hard work of the police investigators, one does also have to question the intelligence of some of the criminals as they left clear clues - perhaps it was just a believe they would never be caught!

If you want to know about the bath, well it featured in the case of a man who had 7 wives, many of them bigamously. In the first case he bought a bath, drowned his (then) wife in it after making sure the life insurance, etc. was all in place and then took the bath back to the shop to get his money back. His next two drownings of subsequent wives took place in other parts of the country (where he was careful to make sure the rented property had a bath). With a handful of false names, lots of forged paperwork and the various marriages around the country, the deaths were all considered accidental but, following a tip off from one of the property owners, seeing a newspaper cutting for another drowning, it was one of the first times the various police forces worked together to solve the crime!