London: In the Shadows

This month's theme is London's dark history.

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  City of Gallows: mapping London’s execution landscape

  London’s landscape was once peppered with prisons, stocks, gibbets, and gallows. Explore London’s execution landscape through these interactive maps, and discover how capital punishment was an inescapable reality for Londoners between 1196 and 1868.

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  London’s dark public execution history in 5 objects

  From an 18th century gibbet to a 300-year-old bed sheet embroidered with human hair, we delve into what these five objects say about public executions in London over 700 years.

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  Death masks of the Crime Museum

  Perhaps one of the most striking collections held by the Metropolitan Police's Crime Museum is that of the death masks, 11 of which were selected for inclusion in The Crime Museum Uncovered exhibition. These depict men who had been executed outside Newgate Prison in London.

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  The Stone Age skull rescued from the river

  Some of the oldest human remains ever recovered from the River Thames were recently found by a mudlark searching the foreshore. What was life like for this Neolithic Londoner, and how did his body end up first in the Thames, and now at the Museum of London?

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  Murder on a train: a Crime Museum story

  Our Crime Museum Uncovered exhibition featured dozens of real-life crime stories drawn from the archives of the Metropolitan Police Service. We explore cases that broke ground in forensic or legal history, like those of Dr. Hawley Crippen and Ruth Ellis. But we also have many less famous cases, which nevertheless deserve our attention and remembrance.

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  The Walbrook skulls: a Roman murder mystery

  In 1988, the remains of thirty-nine Roman Londoners were discovered in the City of London, in what was once the Walbrook valley. Who were they, and how did they die? Dr. Rebecca Redfern reveals the scientific analysis that provides clues to answer an 1800-year-old mystery.

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  Victims of the dark arts in Roman London

  Archaeology Curator Francis Grew immerses himself in Londinium’s deepest grooves, digging up the victims of dark magic and deadly curses.

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  Disciplining the ‘World’s Greatest Port’

  The Port of London Authority’s Discipline Books logged transgressions and sanctions within London’s docks — from pilfered wine to missing work to watch a football match! While these books do record some serious crimes, it seems the dominant sense is of human frailty, rather than malice.

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  Poetry, plagiarism and treason: early years of The Gentleman’s Magazine

  Among the many incarnations of St John’s Gate in Clerkenwell it was the home of England’s first ‘magazine’ — The Gentleman’s Magazine. This partnership between The Museum of the Order of St John and the Museum of London looks at the beginnings of this iconic magazine.

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