Peace’s coat and hat, which had been left behind at the jeweller’s, were for some time in charge of the police. When all hope of finding its owner had been given up the garments in question were conveyed to what is termed the “Black Museum” in Scotland-yard.
This place is one of the sights of London, but it is rare indeed that any stranger is admitted into its sacred precincts. The uninitiated may possibly feel some interest in a description of this receptacle for criminal curiosities.
We subjoin an account of the place, which the reader may rest assured is genuine.
“Take care how you step,” said a courteous official, who preceded the visitor up a staircase in one of the houses in Scotland-yard, and opened a door on an upper story.
“We are obliged to throw a great deal of this about;” the substance in question was a disenfecting powder.
The room into which we were conducted was a large bare-floored apartment, with barred windows, fitted up with wide shelves, which were divided into compartments, and their contents were liberally sprinkled with the all-pervading powder.
The room is that in which the articles of property taken from convicts are stowed away until they are claimed by their owners.
Of course there was not much chance of any one coming forward to claim Peace’s hat and coat from the stand in the centre of this receptacle, of the objects of the “unlawful possessor” class, to which a large room up stairs is also devoted.
Overhead is the “Black Museum,” in which during the last three years pieces de conviction, which until then had been kept indiscriminately with the other property of criminals, have been arranged and labelled, forming a ghastly, squalid, and suggestive show.
On entering the lower room the visitor is struck by its odd resemblance to a seed shop.