Murder cases told through the objects they left behind.
Black Museum is a radio crime drama in which Orson Welles, speaking from London, picks up an ordinary object kept at Scotland Yard and follows the murder behind it. A shilling, a sketched postcard, a stained bed sheet and two bullets each lead to witnesses, inspectors and doctors, and each story ends back at the exhibit.
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Black Museum is a radio crime drama with an unusual organising principle: each story is built around an exhibit, not an investigator. Every case is attached to an object said to be kept at Scotland Yard, in the collection that gives the series its name. Orson Welles speaks the framing passages from London. He calls the stone building on the Thames that houses Scotland Yard 'a warehouse of homicide' and runs through its contents like an inventory: a flower pot, a coffee cup, a curtain rod, a tallow candle, a mounted cat. Then he picks one up. A shilling gets the full treatment, down to its silver alloy and milled edge, before the drama explains why it matters. What follows is mostly staged dialogue. The narrator steps in to skip ahead, set a scene or point out the clue a listener should hold on to. The settings change from case to case. An inspector questions a club singer about a lucky coin and about who came calling on other nights. On a ship that has left Cape Town, a captain calls a doctor to a first-class cabin. There, a stewardess had found the porthole swinging open and the sheet marked with what may be lipstick and blood. Police print sketched postcards found hidden at the back of a bureau, betting that someone will know the drawings. A man takes a pistol from a soldier's holster, and the narrator notes that a lanyard might have saved two innocent lives. Medicine is a frequent turning point. One doctor refuses to sign a death certificate until he has done the post-mortem himself. In another household, constant retching is named as the prime symptom of arsenical poisoning, and a wife has been soaking flypaper for what she calls a complexion preparation. The questioning is clipped; the narration in between is grave and unhurried. The outcomes are not always tidy. One case closes on a jury finding the accused not guilty, and the postcard at its centre, with its rising sun, still unexplained. Another follows a conviction to a life spent in Dartmoor Prison and notes that the House of Commons suspended the death penalty just afterward. Whatever the verdict, the story ends by returning the object to its place in the museum. That return is the payoff: something first heard as one item in a list comes back at the end with a whole case file behind it. The shilling case shows the whole frame, from the opening inventory to the final return to the exhibit.
Made for: Suits a listener drawn to vintage radio drama with a formal, grave narrator, and to crime stories that turn on physical evidence: a stain, a sketch, a coin, a symptom.
What sets it apart: The organising figure is an object rather than an investigator. Each case is traced from an exhibit in Scotland Yard's Black Museum and ends back beside it, with Orson Welles framing the telling from London.
Opening in 1875, the Crime Museum at Scotland Yard is the oldest museum in the world purely for recording crime. The name “Black Museum” was coined in 1877 by a reporter from “The Observer”, a London newspaper, although the museum is still referred to as the Crime Museum. It is this museum that inspired The Black Museum radio series, produced in London by Harry Alan Towers. The Black Museum From Jay Hickerson’s “The Ultimate History of Network Radio Programming and Guide to All Circulating Shows”, the earliest US broadcast date was January 1, 1952. Thirty nine shows, from the full syndication of fifty-two shows, aired over Mutual stations from January 1, 1952, through June 24, 1952, and Sept…
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Orson Welles turns objects held by Scotland Yard into tightly narrated crime dramas driven by evidence and deduction.
Black Museum begins with an ordinary object and lets a murder case gather around it. Orson Welles introduces the evidence, then narration and performed scenes carry the investigation through witness accounts, police work and courtroom consequences.
A spotted bedsheet puts your inner detective on a ship with a very troubling porthole.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A rising sun postcard carries a murder case from physical clue to alibi, courtroom doubt, and a not-guilty verdict.
An ordinary postcard, marked by a rising sun, becomes the thread that pulls a murder inquiry into shape. The trail runs from the Black Museum's grim stone atmosphere to a bureau containing two more cards, then on to May Hester, the artist model asked to provide Larry with an…
A letter, false names, and a case that keeps snapping shut.
Black Museum turns a single letter into the hinge of a fraud case, then keeps the pressure on with false names and a bank transfer meant to move from London to Yarmouth.
A linen sheet from the Bengal Tower becomes a police puzzle built on stains, a porthole, and a partial sighting.
The Black Museum builds its mystery around a linen bed sheet from the steamship Bengal Tower, then traces it from Miss Parsons aboard the ship to Scotland Yard's grim gallery of death.
Two bullets, one stolen pistol, and a comparison microscope drive a grim murder case.
Black Museum centers on two bullets kept as evidence and the deaths tied to them. Set within the grim stone structure on the Thames, home to Scotland Yard, it treats pocketbooks, rag dolls, paperweights, and bullets as objects stamped by murder.
A death-certificate dispute settles into a razor case with Black Museum dread.
Dr. Marshall's refusal to sign the death certificate until a post-mortem explains the inflammation behind poor little Mabel's death gives the episode its first clean jolt, and the turn toward suspicion of arsenical poisoning lands with real force once the razors enter the frame.
True crime with blunt reactions and dark edges.
Scarce radio crime, case by case.
True crime with blunt moral focus.
Political scandal, history, and sharp receipts.
Dr.
Black Museum presents the murder of Alice Cortland, known in London's bars as Daisy Cummins, whose severed body is found at 29 St.
The frame is London Museum.
Two bullets open the case.
The spotted bed sheet opens the story.
Orson Welles introduces the Black Museum, a repository of murder evidence at Scotland Yard, and recounts a case involving a mismatched bullet that saved a life.
Orson Welles introduces the Black Museum, a collection of murder-related objects from Scotland Yard, and sets up a dramatized crime story.
A dramatized radio episode from the Black Museum series, telling the story of a murder involving a prescription with morphia, based on an object in Scotland Yard's Crime Museum.
Orson Welles narrates a dramatized story about a bathtub connected to a murder, part of a series exploring objects in Scotland Yard's Black Museum.