Metropolitan Police Museum and Crime Museum

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.

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

Gonzo for Inspector Bucket!

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.

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

#EYADigital #ExploreYourArchive

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 ...

Welcome to the azure skies @dcpolmuseum.bsky.social !

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 ...

#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

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Alas no, personnel records at that time (such as the one shown) didn't go into so much detail.

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.

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

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.

#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

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.

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

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.'.

#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

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.

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

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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.

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

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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.

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

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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.

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

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.

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

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