ART GALLERY OF CRIME

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 3715, 19 October 1926, Page 7

ART GALLERY OF CRIME

RELICS IN POLICE MUSEUM BEN HAIL’S REVOLVER Why on earth is this little bit of wire kept under a glass case? What on earth is the good of this old broken window pane? Surely this is the strangest collection of rustv rubbish ever accumulated (says a SyclncV ‘Sun’ writer). It is as if the Australian Museum suddenly started exhibiting moth balls or put an emptv jam tin on its shelves. But tliis is not the Australian Museum.

No breathless school children flatten their roses against the glass that houses this display. And very few adults are ever privileged to visit it. If they did, all they would see would be a number of harmless-looking odds a’ud ends—a length of metal piping, a stained cloth, a broken dinner knife scaly with rust —uninteresting ordinary trines that an enthusiastic collector might acquire in half an hour at the nearest rubbish tip. These seemingly uninteresting, ordinary odds and ends are not quite so harmless as they appear. Why is this old broken window pane placed on exhibit?

A rifle broke that window pane—a rifle that, crashing through the window of the Tottenham Police Station, sent a brave man to his death. That innocent-looking twist of wire in a burglar’s hands lias opened a hundred door locks. That rusty table knife is no different from the knife that you use to carve your evening chop—except that it was found in a man’s heart. Such uninteresting, harmless trifles these! Picjc out the most ordinary, the most innocent-looking of them all, and you will find that it has played some sinister part. Here, gathered together in one room, are some of the ghastliest, and yet some of the most ordinary-looking, articles that have been found in the Commonwealth. It is the police museum at the barracks in Bourke street. Not for mere [ morbid interest have these horrors been . collected here. Sensation-seekers ■ and crime-mongers would have difficulty in . getting past the doors. There is a definite purpose in the maintenance ol | this criminal art gallery. It ia the de- 1 monstrating laboratory in the police- , man’s school. Every recruit who passes through the training depot at Bourke street is shown the exhibits in this collection. Lectures are given on these innocent-looking objects that would make the peaceful citizen’s hair rise up and wriggle. The recruits are allowed to examine each of the articles closely, so that they'can store away a picture of them in their brains. It is the culminating stage of a policeman’s education. Here, carefully indexed and stored, are samples of every instrument and tool, every labor-saving device and invention known to the world of crime. The reason is obvious. If the constable on duty knows exactly what sort of things a burglar keeps in his kit he will not pass lightly over the ordinary, harmless-looking little things in a suspect’s possession, which an uninformed discoverer might ignore.

Here, for instance, are dozens ol varieties of jemmies, rows of housebreaking implements, bunches of picklocks and skeleton keys, and all sorts of coining devices. Once the young constable becomes familiar with their appearance he will recognise them again instantly if he is called upon to examine a prisoner’s belongings. So each time a new development or a novel idea in the weapons of the lawbreaker is encountered a specimen of it is carefully stored and filed at the police museum. Day by day the collection at the barracks 'is growing, and the display now lills a large room. 1 Besides, the educational exhibits, a number of records and relics of historic crimes are preserved. Knuckle dusters of iron and brass ? life preservers, burglars’ pistols, Chinese opium pipes, knives that have done murder and re-

volvers that have killed suicides, are on view under glass. The very entrance to the room is terrifying. A skeleton, clicking in the wind, hangs on the door. Near by there is a rack containing almost two hundred differing types of revolvers and firearms, seized by the police for various reasons, and now used to demonstrate all the known makes of guns to the student policeman. The skeleton is used to explain lessons in anatomy for the revolver practice school. Over the museum cases two plaster dcatii masks' stare for over into the dim air. They are those of executed bushrangers—one is of Kogan, and the other of Captain Moonlight himself, or Scott, as his real name was. Both were hanged for the murder of Senior Constable Bowen, at Wantabadgery, in the early eighties. Another historic relic of a famous bushranger is a revolver that belonged to Ben Hall, who was shot dead by I Sub-inspector Davidson at Billabong Creek, near Forbes, in 1860. Ben Hall was carrying this revolver at the time of his death, ft is a “Tranter,” the best make of the time, for which the cartridges had to have their ends bitten off. The revolver is still in an excellent state, despite its age. There are many other grim-looking weapons, some of them stained with a curious rust that is dried blood. There is the cruel Malay kris, with which Nit boils and Lester murdered the young men they lured with an offer of work up the Parramatta River in 1572. Next to it is the brush-hook with which a boy killed Daniel and Margaret O’Keefe' and Patrick Gillick at Ballina in 190(5. The rifle with which Frank Butler shot his victims at (Jlonbrook in 1896 is also preserved. ' A cheerier exhibit is an ordinary policeman’s baton, which, unlike the rest of the weapons in this ghastly collection, is displayed not because it took a life, but because it saved one. It is the baton which deflected a bullet from (lie heart of Constable Bell in 1893, when a shot was fired at him, and luckily hit the baton, falling into the policeman’s pocket instead of his body. A Chinese sword with which a man assaulted a constable in North Sydney is displaced. Two innocent-looking tins arc in reality infernal machines, one of them sent through the post to a man at the Bathurst Street Fruit Markets, and the other found under a house at Mosinan. Another sword is preserved as a specimen of the regulation No. I sword issued formerly to the New South Wales police. Science’s contribution to the armament of the 'criminal is displayed in the exhibit of safebrcaking implements. Plants like those on show could cut through the steel of a safe deposit

as if it were soft cheese. Not even the lighter siile of crime is ignored. Here in the case are all the articles, the mystic 'paraphernalia, connected with illegal games such as crown and anchor and two-up. Each has been confiscated from some big school of secret gamblers, and each has helped hundreds of pounds to change hands. A tragic exhibit is the window pane through which a constable was shot some years ago at the Tottenham Ccurt Police Station. There is even a complete text book on burglary, elaborately compiled, and hand-written by a criminal, in whose possession it was found when ho was arrested s.me tune ago. Put perhaps the limit in misapplied ingenuity is reached in the coining plant, which, with its delicate dies and process engravings, represents a high level of invention. Housed with the rest of these relics, and, like them, under the care of Sergeant Walsh, who has charge ol this side of the recruit’s education, are the finger print records, by means ol winch the system of prints, and .he me-hods bv which they are taken and ideimfied, can be taught to the novice policeman. The whole room is a co.i.pressed university of crime.