It's mid-September so Free Building Visits season is here again. That means London Open House which starts today, but also Heritage Open Days which started yesterday, their two weekends unusually coinciding this year. And because Heritage Open Days also includes a few venues in the capital I've already been out and got my moneysworth, which in this case is no money at all (+£2 donation).
Bow Street Museum of Crime and Justice Formerly known as: Bow Street Police Museum Location: 28 Bow Street, Covent Garden, WC2E 7AW [map] Open: 11am-4.30pm (Friday, Saturday, Sunday only) Admission: £8 (+£2 encouraged donation) Website:bowstreetmuseum.org.uk Four word summary: the famous court's cells Time to allow: less than an hour
Welcome to Bow Street, just round the back of the Royal Opera House, where London's first police force coalesced. The instigator was a magistrate called Henry Fielding who moved into number 4 in 1748 and became concerned by the amount of gin-based disorder in the locality. He hired eight constables to pursue criminals in a more civil manner than the usual street-based violence, these becoming known as the Bow Street Runners, and when his brother succeeded him as magistrate the patrol was refined into London's first effective police force.
Bow Street Magistrates Court started out in 1881 with just three magistrates, two days a week, and built up its reputation from there. A separate police station opened alongside under the auspices of the Metropolitan Police, another London first. The dock at Bow Street welcomed such varied defendants as Dr Crippen, the Kray twins, Oscar Wilde and a couple of Pankhursts, also later General Pinochet and Pete Docherty. But by 2006 it was no longer required and the building was sold to a boutique hotel chain, although it took until 2021 before a different boutique hotel finally opened. As part of the deal a teensy strip of the old building became a museum, essentially a corridor of cells from the police station half, and if you want to see the courthouse these days you have to hire the hotel ballroom.
The museum is accessed from a sidestreet up a handful of steps. As a walk-in visitor I was directed to the counter so I could be issued with my £0.00 ticket... although usually it's £8, ideally they'd like you to give £10 and last year it was only £6 so something's on the up. There are only two places to go, the main room or the corridor, also a few shelves of charming gift shop with a law and order bent.
In the main room we have the actual dock from Court number 2, which the curators hope one day you'll be able to stand on but not before some preservation work has been done. It's also not clear which famous accused stood on this board and which were tried in courts 1 or 3 instead. The walls here tell the story of Bow Street's evolution from Henry's home to full-on cop shop. The story's well told and illustrated but the focus is very much on words and pictures, there being very little in the way of artefacts. One cabinet has a lantern, rattle and inkwell from the olden days plus a trundle wheel used to measure the length of a copper's beat, the other shows what a Bow Street Runner might have worn, and then it's back to reading again. Visitors seemed content to peruse at length.
The corridor is a lot more evocative, being original, with six numbered cells leading off the right-hand side. The first has been left as was with a mattress on a wooden plank as a bed, although the toilet wouldn't have had a glass sheet over it back in the day. The other five are now tiny little galleries with more to see and read, one with a video to watch (although it was a bit full in there so I didn't). The displays add background to the main story, particularly about how the police station operated, and I liked the photo of the old canteen that provided underwhelming breakfasts for prisoners who were up before the beak in the early slot.
There's just the one cabinet here, better stuffed, including hats and handcuffs and an invite to the opening of the replacement police station at Charing Cross. Obviously the famous accused get their own gallery, ditto a half-wall nod to women and minorities, although a celebration of the court artist William Hartley felt a little more forced. Down at the far end is The Tank where multiple prisoners could be detained, perhaps after a heavy night in Covent Garden, which is used for temporary exhibitions like the current focus on the Suffragette movement. But again that's almost all text, because your visit effectively involves a lot of reading whilst in an evocative location. I took several photos, went home and essentially read the museum later.
I see why they changed their name in April away from Bow Street Police Museum because it's not really that, but it's not really a Museum of Crime and Justice either. It's more a fascinating historic corridor leftover from a hotel conversion, gamely making the best of what they've got, but I fear they take less in admission in a day than a single guest pays for a night in a king-sized bed nextdoor.
