The Crime Museum Uncovered: Professor Leif Wenar advises Museum of London

^{Photo credit: Museum of London}

Professor Leif Wenar, Chair in Philosophy & Law at King’s College London, has recently acted as Ethics Consultant to the Museum of London on a major exhibition - The Crime Museum Uncovered.

The exhibition allows the general public to see objects from the Metropolitan Police’s Crime Museum, which was established by the police as a teaching tool in the mid-1870s and, until now, has only been accessible to police professionals and invited guests. The exhibition includes previously unseen objects from real-life crimes such as the Acid Bath Murderer, the Great Train Robbery and the Millennium Dome Diamond Heist.

Professor Wenar worked with the curatorial team to ensure the exhibit would not sensationalise crime - while still bringing to the public the Metropolitan Police’s fascinating collection of objects used in crime and detection. Leif features in a video playing in the final room of the exhibition where he discusses the considerations that were taken in opening the exhibition to the public and the potency of the objects on display.

Excerpts from interview with Professor Leif Wenar

Q: What does it mean to make this collection public?

Professor Wenar: ‘These objects were never meant to be shown to the public, they were only meant to train detectives. So if you’re going to open the Crime Museum up to the public, you’ve got to make sure that the public won’t be harmed. Now, you might ask, how could these objects possibly harm the public? They’re just laying there. And anyways, it’s nothing more than you would see on an average night of television in the evening. The key here is that this is not television. These objects were used in real crimes, involving real people, people as real as you and me.’

Q: Why are these objects so powerful?

Professor Wenar: ‘Why are people so interested in crime? To some extent this is because crime shows great dramas, life and death, justice and injustice. But it’s also deeper than that, in a really interesting way. Crime stories show the rules that people expect each other to live by in this city. We tell each other, what’s allowed, what’s not allowed, what’s just, what’s unjust, what’s right, what’s wrong, what are the common rules that we all have to live by in this huge, diverse city of over eight million people.’

Read more about Professor Wenar’s work on our staff webpages.

The Crime Museum Uncovered runs until 10 April 2016. For full details visit the Museum of London website.