{"id":4715,"date":"2017-07-09T23:17:28","date_gmt":"2017-07-10T06:17:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lisahistoryblog.wordpress.com\/?p=4715"},"modified":"2017-07-09T23:17:28","modified_gmt":"2017-07-10T06:17:28","slug":"the-city-police-museum-and-the-museum-of-london","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/2017\/07\/the-city-police-museum-and-the-museum-of-london\/","title":{"rendered":"The City Police Museum and the Museum of London"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was on a list somewhere, but not a priority. But I was sort of in the neighborhood. My five pound notes from last year are no longer legal currency. And here I thought I’d been thinking ahead. Walking into a bank early in the trip, I asked to exchange them, but, as in America, if you don’t have an account, they won’t even talk to you. Even when it’s cash.<\/p>\n

So I made a trip to the Bank of England, because I’ve never been there and I’m too cheap to just throw away \u00a315. There was a queue just for that. In fact there was no other queue. If you don’t work there, you can’t go in.<\/p>\n

But there I was in the heart of British banking land, so I started walking to get out. Deciding to head toward the Museum of London (maybe they have something on Wells there?), I saw a sign that said City Police Museum<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I wondered whether this was the Met, but it seemed not. The City Police only patrol the City of London (now the financial district). They were part of the Jack the Ripper murders for about five minutes before the Met took it over. But they have their own history and their own museum inside their own building, staffed by men who do not smile and tell you there is no toilet even when you’ve come to see their museum.<\/p>\n

But I’m a big fan of little museums (more on that soon).<\/p>\n

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And it was little, but professional and interesting. They dwelt a bit on the murder of Catherine Eddowes, the Ripper’s first victim, and on some other grisly murders. The balance of emphasis on police versus criminals was about 50\/50.<\/p>\n

Particularly interesting was the clothing worn by police. Although I didn’t take a picture, there was a helmet worn by a policeman in the 1973 London bombing, blown apart but saving the policeman’s life. I now look at those helmets much differently.<\/p>\n

I did photograph the gallery of murder weapons, or part of it (there were rather a lot of them).<\/p>\n

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Right, enough of that. Onward to the Museum of London<\/a>, obvious from the street but tricky to get to, as you have to go up above the street to access their walkway.<\/p>\n

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But the Museum was a revelation, and overwhelming in how much they packed in. It looked designed for a whirlwind tour, and indeed there were whirlwinds of children there in packs, branded with little uniform vests.<\/p>\n

Here’s what I wrote sitting next to a machine that read aloud text in different languages of early England:<\/p>\n

There are not many places to sit in the galleries of the Museum of London – I made it to the Reformation before I had to stop for a minute, and went back to the 14th century to take a rest. This museum puts in sharp relief that so much of what I know of English history is really London’s history.<\/em><\/p>\n

I skipped the Roman era (sorry, classicists), since to me things start with the Anglo-Saxons (sorry, Celtophiles). Then I sought out the objects of daily life, discovering lead labels for cloth bales, tools, shoes, lots of potter. I know now I teach the History of England because I love so many of the events, almost something in each era. The medieval cloth industry, of course. The Henrican Reformation, which I used to consider esoteric but this trip I see more vividly the destruction it caused. Next room: The Civil War and the Great Fire. Slow down! This place seems meant for children, zipping through the rooms. The wall behind the Annunciation boasts the first copperplate map, from the 16th century, on its opposite side.<\/em><\/p>\n

There is, however, a bench in the Victorian street, small compared to Vancouver or York Castle, but with many wonderful objects on display, and the requisite soundtrack of horse-pulled carriages and drays and sounds of the city.<\/em><\/p>\n

Well worth a visit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was on a list somewhere, but not a priority. But I was sort of in the neighborhood. My five pound notes from last year are no longer legal currency. And here I thought I’d been thinking ahead. Walking into a bank early in the trip, I asked to exchange them, but, as in America, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[35,4,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-england","category-history","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4715\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}