Crimescribe

“This is Orson Welles speaking from London. The Black Museum, repository of death… Here, in this grim stone structure on the Thames which houses Scotland Yard, is a warehouse of homicide where everyday objects, a piece of wire, a chemist’s flask, a silver shilling, all are touched by murder…”

In today’s internet age there are a myriad of true crime podcasts. In the 1950’s there was screen legend Orson Welles (star of Citizen Kane and Waterloo among other film classics) presenting Tales from the Black Museum. First Welles, in his own inimitable style, describes the exhibit itself before narrating a dramatised version of the case its connected to.

For any true crime buff its a fascinating series of real cases with names changed to protect the innocent (and sometimes the guilty). For any podcaster it’s well worth sampling to hear a master at work. If you’re a fan of historic true crime then have fun testing your criminal knowledge by trying to identify the real cases behind the changed names.

The Black Museum, as any true crime buff knows, is a private collection of exhibits and evidence drawn from thousands of criminal cases investigated by the British police. Not open to the public, visits are by appointment and only to police officers or others its custodians consider appropriate. For anyone with a squeamish disposition its location is appropriate, sited in Room 101 at New Scotland Yard.

This was far from Welles’ first foray into radio, in fact it will always be overshadowed by his dramatisation of H G Wells’ War of the Worlds back in the late 1930’s. Originally broadcast in 1952 and syndicated for an American audience, European listeners first got to hear Tales from the Black Museum in 1953 on Radio Luxembourg. It’s since been repeated, usually a small selection of episodes instead of the full series, in the 1970’s, 1980’s and 1990’s. The BBC finally got round to airing a few episodes as late as 1994.

Courtesy of the Old Time Radio Researchers Group, all 53 episodes are available to hear online. They’re also downloadable as MP3 files. You can pop along and find the series, in full and free to hear and download, at the following address:

https://archive.org/details/OTRR_Black_Museum_Singles