About
The Bow Street Museum of Crime and Justice occupies the ground floor of the former police station and magistrates' court that stood opposite the Royal Opera House for well over a century, and it tells the story of policing and criminal justice from a building where both were actually done. The station closed in 1992 and the court in 2006; the museum opened in the surviving fabric in May 2021 and changed its name from the Bow Street Police Museum during 2025 and 2026, partly to avoid confusion with the Metropolitan Police's own historic collection and partly because the subject was always wider than the police.
Bow Street's claim on the history is early and unusually direct. It was here, from the 1740s, that the magistrate Henry Fielding and later his blind half-brother Sir John Fielding organised a small body of paid thief-takers who became known as the Bow Street Runners, some eighty years before Peel's Metropolitan Police. The Runners were not a police force in the modern sense, but they were salaried, directed from one office, and expected to pursue offenders across the country, and the museum sets out both what they achieved and how they were paid, criticised and eventually absorbed.
The court that grew up alongside became the London magistrates' court that heard the cases everyone remembers. Oscar Wilde was committed for trial from here, Dr Crippen passed through, the Kray twins appeared, the suffragettes were brought before its bench, and in 1998 and 1999 the extradition hearings concerning General Pinochet were held in the building. Original courtroom furniture survives, as do cells including the large communal detention room known as the tank.
Displays draw on Metropolitan Police collections, including courtroom sketches, equipment and personal material from officers, and the museum works hard to keep the perspective plural rather than celebratory: defendants, witnesses, reformers and the policed appear alongside the police. Entry is timed and ticketed in small groups, which keeps the rooms quiet enough to read them properly.
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Plan Your Visit
⏱️ Recommended Visit Duration
💡 Visitor Tips
- Book a timed slot online in advance - visitor numbers per slot are deliberately small and walk-up space is not guaranteed.
- Remember the museum is closed Monday to Thursday outside school holidays; Friday to Sunday is the reliable window.
- Last admission is at 16:00, and the cells and courtroom displays deserve more than the hour that leaves.
- Ask about the concession rates: Camden and Westminster residents and National Art Pass holders pay £4.00 on proof.
- Under-12s go free, which makes this an affordable stop for families visiting Covent Garden.
- Step-free access covers the whole museum, including the cells - unusual for a building of this date.
- Covent Garden Underground has no step-free access; Charing Cross is the better route for wheelchair users.
- Combine with the London Transport Museum four minutes away, or with a matinee at the Royal Opera House opposite.
Highlights
The cells and the tank
The surviving cells are the part of the building that most visitors remember, and the largest of them is the communal detention room known to generations of officers as the tank. It is a plain, hard, echoing space, and the museum resists the temptation to dress it up: the interpretation concentrates on who was held here, for how long, and under what rules, from drunk-and-disorderly arrests on Covent Garden nights to defendants waiting to be taken up into the court above.
Standing inside one does more to explain the routine texture of nineteenth and twentieth-century policing than any display case, and the museum keeps group sizes small enough that you can.
The Bow Street Runners
From the 1740s the magistrate Henry Fielding, and after him his blind half-brother Sir John Fielding, ran a small salaried body of thief-takers from this address, some eighty years before the Metropolitan Police was founded. The museum sets out what they actually were: not a uniformed force but paid investigators directed from one office, expected to travel after offenders and to give evidence, funded by an uneasy mixture of government money and rewards.
Displays cover their methods, their reputation for both effectiveness and corruption, the criticism they attracted, and their eventual absorption once Peel's new police made a separate body of runners redundant.
Original courtroom furniture
Bow Street's magistrates' court sat until 2006, and elements of its fittings survive in the museum, including the heavy dark furniture that framed proceedings for well over a century. What makes these objects worth attention is how ordinary they look and how much followed from them: the raised bench, the dock, the plain seating for a public gallery that in famous cases was fought over.
The museum uses them to explain how a magistrates' court actually worked, what a committal hearing did, and why so many nationally significant cases began in a room that was designed for the daily business of a London parish rather than for history.
Oscar Wilde at Bow Street
In April 1895 Oscar Wilde was brought before the magistrate at Bow Street and committed for trial, and the museum treats the case seriously rather than as celebrity trivia. The displays set out the legal framework under which Wilde was prosecuted, the mechanics of the committal, and the treatment he received while held in the building, alongside the wider history of the criminalisation of homosexuality that the case sits inside.
It is one of the clearest illustrations of the museum's wider point about itself: that the history of justice here is not only the history of the people enforcing it.
Collections
The museum interprets the history of policing and criminal justice through the surviving fabric of the Bow Street police station and magistrates' court, including cells and the large communal detention room known as the tank, and original courtroom furniture.
Displays draw on Metropolitan Police collections, among them courtroom sketches, officers' equipment, uniform items, notebooks and personal effects, together with case material relating to the Bow Street Runners of the 1740s onwards and to the court's most significant hearings, from Oscar Wilde's committal in 1895 to the Pinochet extradition proceedings of 1998 and 1999.
Interpretation is deliberately plural, setting defendants, witnesses and the policed alongside the institutions, and entry is by timed slot in small groups.
The Bow Street Runners
The Fieldings' salaried thief-takers of the 1740s onwards, their methods, funding and reputation, and their place before the Metropolitan Police.
The Station and the Court
The working building: cells, the tank, courtroom furniture, and the daily business of policing Covent Garden until 1992.
Cases That Passed Through
Hearings from Oscar Wilde and Dr Crippen to the Krays, the suffragettes and the Pinochet extradition proceedings.
Themes
Time Periods
Current Exhibitions
No current exhibitions. Please check the museum website for updates.
Nearby Museums (5 within 6 miles)
London Transport Museum
London — ~2 min walk (0.1 mi)
Library and Museum of Freemasonry
London — ~3 min walk (0.2 mi)