CHAPTER XIII.
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 £12,000. For various plausible reasons he was willing to dispose of it to them for £2,000. 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.