London (AFP)

No more thugs and drunkards, now room for visitors: old custody cells, but also sobering up, have been restored in the latest London museums, which traces the evolution of the police in the British capital.

Located in the heart of London in the district of Covent Garden, the former Bow Street police station, more than a century and a half old, opens its doors on Friday.

The building, which housed one of London's first police stations, which adjoins a former courthouse, has been largely converted into a luxury hotel.

But part of the old police station now presents its extraordinary history.

Visitors can venture into cells - renovated - where over time have succeeded assassins, suffragists, dictators and even the writer and playwright Oscar Wilde.

"The Bow Street court has seen a lot of famous cases go by," museum curator Jen Kavanagh told AFP during a presentation, delighted to show "the story that took place behind these walls."

# photo1

To do this, she worked with former officers stationed here in the 1950s to better capture the soul of the place.

- Renaissance -

After almost 30 years of sleep since it closed in 1992, the police station today tells three centuries of British police history, which began with the Bow Street “Runners”.

This is how the members of the first organized police force were called, a flying patrol made up at the beginning of the 18th century of volunteers with bells, lanterns and sticks.

When it was formed in 1829, they were incorporated into the Metropolitan Police, a name which still designates the British Capital Police today.

# photo2

With the commissioning of the building which now houses the museum in 1881, Bow Street remained a hotspot for London law enforcement for decades.

Philip Gough, a retired inspector who worked there from 1989 until it closed three years later, is now a member of the museum and has joined former colleagues in a meeting "charged with 'emotion' last week to discover the exhibition.

"When the post closed, everyone wanted it to become a museum," he told AFP, as two mounted police officers trotted up.

"Unlike every other police station in the country, it had this Bow Street + Runner label ... it was like shutting down a chapter of history, but like a phoenix it rises from the ashes."

- "Part of the story" -

The museum traces the beginnings of modern policing from Bow Street, with items like a 19th-century lantern and a replica of the Runners' blue uniform, but it also looks at the site's more recent history.

# photo3

The building has seen everything from cases of paramilitary attacks by the Irish Republican Army to the IRA, to the extradition of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, to murdered policewoman Yvonne Fletcher, who was attached to it.

She was monitoring a small demonstration outside the Libyan embassy in 1984 when she was hit by gunfire from the diplomatic compound, a murder that led the UK to cut off relations with Tripoli for 15 years.

The museum also displays artifacts from the old court, including a defendant's box, which closed 14 years after the police station, in 2006.

The six old men's cells are used for the exhibition, with visitors even being encouraged to take their seats in the last of them, that of the sobering up.

"There was graffiti on the walls, the smell in the cells ... rancid, to put it politely," recalls Lee-Jane Yates, a former police officer who worked there in the 1980s and collaborated on the setting. in museum scene.

# photo4

"It is more than likely the first police station in the country, but we do not know the history, it is only after, when we leave it, that we say to ourselves: damn, I'm part of this story! "

© 2021 AFP