Secrets of Scotland Yard

world's most famous detective forc

Scotland Yard has a long history.

It specializes in the an

it investigates crime.

(Sirens blare)

The name Scotland Yard still conjures up the images of

detectives wearing trilby hats and trench coats.

Tenacity...

There's a lot of pride in Met detectives - we don't like to be beaten.

Bravery...

We knew we were facing very, very dangerous criminals.

(Siren wails)

And sheer persistence...

My job was on the line if this went wrong.

..all keep S

cutting edge of crime detection.

Buried in the cellar was simply visc

but you can learn a lot from things like that.

Secrets of Scotland Yard.

(Siren wails)

This program is made possible

Scotland Yard: the London police HQ

whose name is synonymous with all that's best

in the detection of crime.

This seemingly anonymous office block

hides a century and more of dark and infamous secrets.

Today, at the heart of this sprawling metropolis,

it's home to one of the

detective forces in the world:

the Metropolitan Police Service -

know

as 'The Met'.

Now, we shed new light on the earliest days of modern policing,

through the felony-p

archives of Scotland Yard.

We fol

as they retrace the steps of the earliest detectives,

find o

every crime-fighting technique

in its repertoire to stop the biggest heist in history...

..and reopen classified files

to reveal how the seeds of modern-day policing

are sown by the world's most famous murder case.

These are the secrets of Scotland Yard.

(Siren wails)

London, with its daytime population of up to 15 million,

coul

nightmare.

London, it's a crossroads of crime.

It's always going to be a key center for criminal activity,

for law breaking, for politically-motivated crimes.

A million cr

take place in London every year.

From their headquarters at New Scotland Yard,

33,000 officers safeguard one of the largest cities in Europe,

patrolling nearly 10,000 miles of street,

more than 200 miles of waterway

and 600 square miles of airspace,

24 hours a day, seven days a week.

There are a lot of niche units inside Scotland Yard.

Pretty much all parts of the detective

divisions of Scotland Yard have secrets.

The history of Scotland Yard dates back almost 200 years.

London at the beginning of the 19th century

has become, very suddenly,

the largest city

the world has ever known.

The poor are flooding in to look for work.

And so there's a

whole new class of urban poor

and a parallel rise in backstreet crime.

So you suddenly have this sense of,

it's a dark and dangerous world out there,

and that's the w

that enabled

the creation of the police.

With crime rising in the early-19th century,

government faces a growing clamor

Finally, in 1829,

the future Prime Minister, Robert Peel, passes the Metrop

And London's police force

the Met - is born.

One letter still stored in the archive

reveals Robert Peel's or

vision for his police force.

This is a remarkable document, actually,

signed by Robert Peel.

This letter sets out the structure of it:

eigh

20 inspectors

88 sergeants, 895 constables.

They

Peelers after Robert Peel.

They wanted people who were reliable

but were solid working-class types.

Not too posh...

but people who

the streets of London.

Today, historian Judith Flanders is on the hunt

for the regal origins of Scotland Yard.

We're going down Whitehall now,

the seat of governmental power.

And as part

of governmental power,

the Metropolitan Police headquarters was in this turning off Whitehall,

which was called Scotland Yard.

Centuries before,

the Kings of Scotland had had a palace on the land.

And the reason that

we today refer to

the Metropolitan Police as Scotland Yard

is simply it was the original address of headquarters.

Scotland Yard was the name of the headquarters

when the Metropolitan Police was formed.

We moved a couple of times, but we lik

because everyone knows the headquarters is Scotland Yard.

The Yard's original address

now houses just one remaining mounted police unit,

a last reminder of the street's secret history.

Here at Great Scotland Yard we can have up to about 27 horses at any one time.

This is Illustrious, he's number 20 on our binder.

He's not long been with

here at Great Scotland Yard.

(Chanting)

The Met's Mounted Branch is charged with

of crowd control,

from football matches

to modern-day riots and demonstrations -

similar challenges to the massive problems

of civil unrest facing English politicians back in 1829.

The government is running scared -

this is just a few decades after bloody revolution

had slaughtered the political elite of France.

In the mood for revolution themselves,

the English public distrusts Robe

They view its constables as government spies.

So to quell the disquiet,

Robert Peel forbids the Met to look into people's private affairs.

Robert Peel had to agree the police would only be there

for the prevention of crime.

That was their sole function.

It sounds asto

to modern ears,

but it was actually illegal for the police to investigate wrongdoing.

Although their presence might ho

they can do nothing to find out who those villains are.

It's a situation that will last for more than a decade

after the formation of the Met.

By 1840, the Met has been installed at Scotland Yard for 11 years.

The new police officers dress in civilian-style clothing

to reassure the public that they aren't military spies.

They carry just a wooden truncheon and a rattle

to raise the alarm for help.

But throughout this time,

the Met's first commissioner is secretly training

a few of his best policemen to investigate crime -

thereby breaking the law of the land.

Richard Mayne, the commissioner of police,

felt the only sensible thing to do

was work behind the governme

And very quietly he set up a proto detective department.

The secret, illegally operating detectives soon see action.

That summer, in the wealthy district of Mayfair,

an elderly aristocrat, and former member of parliament,

is murdered.

The pressure on the Met to solve the case is immense.

Richard Mayne himself, the comm

was brought into the action right away.

And he brought with him his secret proto detectives.

Suppos

broken through Lord Russell's front door,

encountered the nobleman and killed him before escaping.

Th

street Lord William lived on.

And the front door was broken in.

But when the secret de

looked at this crime,

they said, 'Why would you jemmy a door

where th

directly across the road?'

It's terribly overlooked.

There is a service street right there where no one could see you.

Why wouldn't they use that?

Next, the secret detectives continue to break

the very law which had created their force,

and search the house

looking for a murder weapon.

They find a knife which has been returned to the cutlery drawer

and deduce that the culprit works in the house.

Scotland Yard's secret detectives figure out

that Lord Russell's own valet is the murderer.

So this was all terrific detection work.

Despite this success,

it isn't until 1842 that the detectives can come out of the shadows.

That year, a madman tries to assassinate Britain's beloved Queen Victoria.

The attack fails, but the Met's commissioner uses it

to argue that this outrage could have been prevented

if the police had investigative powers.

Richard Mayne realized that this was the perfect opportunity

to expand the powers of the po

which he had long wanted to do.

Two months later,

Scotland Yard's 'Detective Department'

finally opens for business.

All that happened was what had been secret

and technically illegal became open and legal.

Now free to operate as they wish,

Scotland Yard's first

eight plain-clothes detectives

take to London's streets.

I think these early

detectives absolutely sowed the seeds

for the reputation of Met detectives.

There's a lot of pride in Met detectives, we don't like to be beaten.

And it is a challenge, outwitting the criminal, really.

The success and investigative skills of early detectives

soon capture the public imagination.

Famous writers d

those first detectives with great kind of adulation.

They imagined that they were of sort of preternatural intelligence.

What we think of as Scotland Yard was the creation of crime writers.

And that created in our minds

the notion of the disinterested obje

tracking down the evil criminal that Scotland Y

represents.

By the 1860s, the cult of the Scotland Yard detective is established.

These are the men who would inspire

such fictional characters as Sherlock Holmes.

Although the super sleuth is an independent investigator,

a private detective never employed by the police,

Scotland Yard has its very own 'Sherlock' -

a real-life counterpart of the fictional detective:

'Dick Tanner of the Yard'.

It's an horrific real-life murder

in the London suburb of Hackney

that catapults 'Inspector Tanner of the Yard' to public attention.

The case, in 1864,

is the fir

on a train.

To the crime-obsessed Victorian public,

it becomes known as 'the Railway Murder'.

Tanner leads the investigation.

In 1864, Dick Tanner is just 31.

The commissioner, Richard Maine, thinks that he is

his most brilliant young officer,

he is going to be running his own investigation and this is a huge case.

He knows that it will make or break him.

Today, historical author Kate Coloquhoun

retraces the course of Dick Tanner's seminal investigation.

By 1864, thanks to the Industrial Revolution,

railways

Britain.

(Train's whistle)

Soon, they will play a vital role in Tanner's detective work.

Just where the road bridge is down there,

there was actually a railway bridge.

And you would have seen steam trains rattling across,

rather like you see the traffic today.

as the principle of Victorian life.

So, no longer were goods

gently coming up and down the canals.

Now you've g

transforming the notion

of how fast people and goods can travel.

Because hitherto, you could only go as fast as a galloping horse.

Th

has enabled businessmen

to move out to suburbs like Hackney.

July 9th, 1864.

Wealthy businessman Thomas Briggs

leaves the financial district of the City of London,

and heads home to Hackney.

Kate Coloquhoun follows in his footsteps.

Thomas Briggs ha

through the City

to Fenchurch Street station.

He walks to the front of the furthest forward of the first class carriages

and sits with his back towards the engine,

so that he doesn't get any of the soot coming in through the window.

The first-class carriage is about to become a death trap.

The first-class compartments were boxlike,

with one door on either side which were locked between the stations.

While the train's in motion - big, steamy, rattley steam train -

there's probably no way you could even call for help and be heard.

But so

Thomas Briggs goes missing.

The first-class carriage offe

a set of grisly clues.

There were bloody handprints on the walls, on the off-side door handle.

There were blood splatters up the window,

and they also found blood on the outside of the compartment,

where it looked as if Thomas Brigg's head had actually

hit part of the wheel as he fell out of the train.

The whereabouts of Mr. Briggs' body remains a mystery...

until it is found on t

railroad later that night.

So they brought the body here to a

The Mitford Castle,

it's now renamed.

But he never regained consciousness, and he died within

at which point this was a case for Scotland Yard.

As young Inspector Tanner

arrives on the scene, further clues are emerging.

First he finds that Mr. Brigg's top hat and gold watch are missing.

Knowing the murderer may try to sell the missing items,

Tanner advertizes a £200 reward for information.

It encourages a jeweler to come forward.

He reports that a young foreigner ha

gold chain into his shop.

Then a cab driver tells of a young German man who had left hurriedly for America...

in suspicious circumstances.

His name is Franz Muller.

At Scotland Yard, Tanner now has a prime suspect,

but his task is far from over.

Franz Muller has a

left for America.

Tanner's really thinking on his feet at this point.

Because Muller's poor, he's taken a slow boat

but Tanner can harness technology to catch his suspect.

train to Liverpool.

From there he can buy a ticket on a fast-going steam ship across the ocean.

He can outpace Muller and hope to be i

time to arrest him there.

Tanner's determination pays off:

he arrives in America almost three weeks before his suspect.

And when Muller fi

Mr. Briggs' gold watch

and a suspiciously similar hat are found in his luggage.

Today at Scotland Yard, one antiquated notebook holds details of the case.

The book I've got here is the arrest book

for Detective Inspector Richard Tanner.

Franz Muller, apprehended 24th August, 1864.

'On the 27th, the prisoner was examined before Judge Newton at New York,

wh

handed over to my custody

on a warrant granted by the President of the United States.

Muller is shipped back for trial in London.

His public h

on November 14th, 1864 - attracts 50,000 spectators.

Detective Dick Tanner may have inspired the fictional sleuth Sherlock Holmes.

But every superhero needs his nemesis.

And if Tanner is Sherlock,

then the Yard is soon to face his arch enemy -

a real-life Moriarty.

In the 1870s, the detective branch at Scotland Yard

comes up against an unparalleled master criminal.

Chief Inspector John Shore spent more than two decades trying to track him down.

The American villain Adam Worth boasts an infamous record of crime -

gambling rackets in France, diamond robberies in South Africa,

larceny in North America.

Inspecto

a thick portfolio on Worth.

Most of the detectives at Scotland Yard

thought he was the cleverest and most ingenious criminal of all time.

Inspector Shore referred to him as the Napoleon of crime,

partly because he was a great general of a great crime network,

but also because he was small, he was 5'4".

The diminutive American arrives in London in 1874.

He sets himself up as an English gentleman

on the main thoroughfare of fashionable Mayfair.

Today investigative author John Farndon retraces the steps

of one of Scotland Yard's most ingenious foes.

Adam Worth's flat was right here.

It was 198 Piccadilly.

Worth's Piccad

becomes an international clearing house of crime.

All kinds of really coming in.

They were some of the nastiest c

They were really the big wheels in European organized crime.

Inspector Shore has informants in Adam Worth's camp,

so h

But solid evidence is missing.

Shore's only hope is to catch his

red-handed.

Scotland Yard tailed him all the time

in the hope of catching him out, but they never did.

By now, Adam Worth believes himself to be above the law.

In May 1876, what was then the most expensive painting ever sold

goes on display in Piccadilly.

When Adam Worth sees Gainsborough's portrait of the Duchess of Devonshire,

he knows

will be.

The Duchess of Devonshire hangs in one of London's most fashionable galleries.

On May

called to the Agnew gallery.

The Duchess of Devonshire has vanished into thin air.

All they found in the upstairs room was just the frame

and the painting cut away in a very, very neat, business-like way.

And it was a while before

they spotted that the window

was open, just a little way.

They assumed it could only be a very small man.

Inspector Shore's informants identify Adam Worth as the thief.

Shore just can't prove it.

And he never suspects the true whereabouts of the masterpiece.

Adam Wor

with the painting.

He kept the painting under his mattress

and he slept with the painting for 20 years.

Towards the end of his life, Adam Worth eventually relinquished the Duchess.

Still remaining incognito, he trades her for a reward

rumored to be in excess of $0.5 million in today's money.

By this time, Worth has formed a bizarre friendship

with American detective William Pinkerton.

In Piccadi

the fashionable Criterion Bar is a favored haunt.

Over time, Worth tells the American detective

how he repeatedly fooled Inspector Shore.

20 years later,

when Pinkerton in turn runs into Sherlock Holmes author Arthur Conan Doyle,

He recounts Worth's tale.

The story was to immortalize Adam Worth as the stuff of literary legend.

Adam Worth inspired the character of Moriarty

who is Sherlock Holmes' arch enemy in the Conan Doyle novels.

personified with his great intellect,

his love of art, his refinement, his sense of control.

his own Moriarty,

Chief Inspector Shore goes on to become a superintendent with a distinguished career,

unlike some other Scotland Yard detectives

who were finding themselves on the wrong side of the law.

One of the glories of Scotland Yard

is its Criminal Investigation Department, the CID.

It ranks alongside agencies such as the FBI in its crime-detecting prowess.

Which makes it ironic that the CID owes its existence

to the corruption of the Met detectives themselves.

In 1877, the 'Trial of the Detectives' causes a sensation.

The Grea

described as Scotland Yard's blackest moment.

The story begins with a classic 'sting'.

A French noblewoman is conne

which stacks up to more th

million in today's money.

The scam involves false bets on horse racing.

The confidence tricksters are caught and convicted.

Their trial, at London's famous Bow Street Magistrate's court,

reveals a terrible truth.

Detectives from Scotland Yard are also involved in the crime.

Corrup

at Scotland Yard

and you can trace that right back to the late 1800s,

when thr

at Scotland Yard

were arrested, essentially, taking bribes from two well-known fraudsters.

They had been giving them the nod and the wink

when investigations were getting cl

for a back-hander.

August, 1877:

three high-ranking policemen are themselves in the dock of the court.

They're convicted and jailed for two years.

Those were the f

Metropolitan Police officers

who ever went to prison for such an offence.

The Home Secretary immediately orders

an in-depth investigation into the Met's detective department.

A year later, it is abolished.

A new Criminal Investi

Department - the CID - takes its place.

The new 800-strong CID

is four times the size of the old detective department.

And it has a vital new detection technique:

it s

criminal records.

What I think Scotland Yard did so brilliantly was,

and I do not mean this unkindly,

I am hugely approving of it,

was paperwork.

Over the years, the CID's Criminal Records Office

collects the details of thousands of crimes,

and, along with other Met departments,

continues to recruit more men.

By 1890, the organization has been forced to relocate

to a new purpose-built HQ.

Fittingly, perhaps, the castle-like building

is built from stone quarried by convicts.

It will house Scotland Yard for the next 80 years.

Just as the move is being planned,

Scotland Yard finds itself facing its most chilli

Detectives will use every trick in their book

in the hunt for one of the world's first serial killers,

Jack the Ripper.

In 1888, Jack the Ripper is terrorizing London.

Scotland Yard never catches this depraved and audacious murderer.

But in the race to hunt him down,

the Met develops innovative techniques of crime detection still in use today.

Jack the Ripper selects his women victims

in one of London's most notorious slums - Whitechapel.

Today, Ripper expert John Chambers retraces the murderer's steps.

The police wouldn't go in here.

It wasn't safe for them to go round because a lot of the criminals

were armed with knives and billy clubs and axes and little hatchets,

whereas the police only had a small truncheon to fight them off.

In 1888, nearly 1,500 prostitutes walk the streets of Whitechapel.

In the early hours of August 7th,

one of them is killed in an area called George Yard Buildings.

It marks the start of the Ripper's reign of terror.

When it came to the police doing an inv

they didn't really have much to work on,

they didn't have any kind of crime scene investigation,

they didn't have fingerprints,

they didn't have any kind of forensics.

Within a month, the killer strikes again.

There had already been o

murder here in Whitechapel,

when on 8th September, 1888,

a body was discovered in the backyard of number 29 Hanbury Street,

an old Georgian terrace - it used to be right here.

Now, when the police got to the scene of crime,

they discovered the mutilated remains

of 47-year-old prostitute Annie Chapman.

Many of the doctors believed at the time

that it may be the work of someone who was very skilled with a blade.

The two Whitechapel victims

have been mutilated in similar ways.

It suggests they've been butchered by the same hand.

But Scotland Yard finds no other links between them.

Most murders in the 19th century were committed

between people who had some kind of relationship with each other,

as is, of course, the case today.

In the case of the Ripper murders, quite soon after the first killing,

that this had not been committed by a person known to the victim.

To modern eyes, Jack the Ripper s

of a serial killer.

But back then, Scotland Yard has no

a heinous crime.

In the context of the history of serial killing,

the Ripper murders are absolutely the granddaddy of them all.

Ja

absolutely embodies

everything that we currently associate with the concept of a serial killer.

The assistant commissioner asks police surgeon Dr Thomas Bond

to investigate any links between the killings.

The hope is, Dr Bond's insights will narrow down the list of suspects.

techniques brought to bear on serial killing offences,

absolutely the key thing is to link the crimes.

Because the choice of victims does give the police

a great deal of information about the killer.

What Dr Bond comes u

is the world's first criminal profile.

The profile

Thomas Bond developed

included characteristics such as whether the offender

was likely to be left or right-handed,

what kind of occupation he was likely to follow,

where he was likely to live in respect to the crime scenes,

and whether the people who worked and lived alongside him

might have any kind of suspicion of him.

When yet another woman is

mutilations,

there is little room for doubt.

Catherine Eddowes is the fourth victim of the same sadistic killer.

Our killer

a complete state.

When he cut her throat,

he cuts it so deep he nearly cuts her head off.

He then tore through three layers of her clothing

and then ripped her open.

He slit into her eyelids just there and there,

and he cut these two upside down Vs on her cheeks, just there and there.

As well as criminal profiling,

the Ripper investigators have another new weapon up their sleeves.

They document the crime scenes in intricate detail -

records that survive to this day.

Primar

Ripper murders is particularly striking.

Th

to get the body,

the situation, the injuries well documented.

The drawing of Eddowes

made in situ at Mitre Square.

This is the crime scene drawing

and it shows the body as it was found with the legs spread open,

the clothes opened up,

you see the lacerations to the face and to the eyelids.

We have here a plan of the Mitre Square area.

The body of Catherine Ed

is clearly shown.

And in 1888, the police have another new tool to record the Ripper's victims:

photographic images.

Eddowes' body in the mortuary,

and that's interesting because we also have

anatomical drawings of the injuries in the mortuary too.

So the drawings

wound in the abdomen.

The photographs show

body after the abdomen was sewn up.

As news of the murder spreads,

detectives are inun

The signature on one gives the killer his infamous name.

Another provides the criminal profilers with an alarming insight.

The

accompanied by a piece of human kidney.

It was reportedly sent by the murderer

after he had eaten the other

portion of the kidney.

That's interesting in itself

because it's suggestive of cannibalism

which you do see in some serial murders in recent years.

By now, Scotland Yard's commissioner

is desperately seeking new ways to catch the killer.

Commissioner Warren orders detectives to investigate the use of bloodhounds.

He believes their sense of smell can be harnessed to track down the killer.

Shortly after the bloodhound experiments, the killer strikes again.

For Scotland Yard, it is the last opportunity to catch Jack the Ripper.

It is also the first time that detectives

deliberately preserve the scene of a crime.

Well, this was once upon a time Dorset Street,

the worst street in all of London.

It's where the last victim of the Whitechapel murders was discovered,

at 10.45 in the morning.

The police had b

the entrance

so no onlookers could go in and tamper with the crime scene.

That was one of the first times they really tried to

do it and had some success.

The victim is 25-y

prostitute Mary Kelly.

She is the only Ripper victim to be killed indoors.

And these images of her horrendously mutilated body on a bed,

are the first known crime scene photographs.

Crime scene photographs are very important.

They give you a great record of the crime scene as you find it.

Things that may not seem important at the time may suddenly become important.

It may show part of a pattern.

So every little detail you can record,

adds to the pictures that go with the puzzle.

have never been solved.

Yet they represent a watershed moment in the history of Scotland Yard.

The search for

created investigative techniques

which are still in use today.

As Scotland Yard heads into the 20th century,

the new-fangled scie

forensics is about to take center stage.

In 1910, a famous murder case is solved by Scotland Yard,

thanks to two world-changing inventions of the Victorian age.

An A

in North London, Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen,

is suspected of mu

This is a picture of Cora Crippen.

Unusual woman, she was

a music hall artiste.

On

they held a dinner party for a couple of their friends.

And the friends left about one o'clock in the morning

and that was the last anybody ever saw of Mrs. Crippen.

Crippen explains the disappearance

by claiming she'd returned home to America.

But living with Dr.

was Ethel le Neve

who had been his secretary.

So tongues started to wag.

Scotland Y

a detective to investigate.

He finds nothing suspicious

until he reaches the basement.

When he finally went back into the cell

looked a little more closely

he began to realize that the bricks seemed to have been taken up in one place.

he prized up the bricks

and pretty soon he began to flesh buried in the cellar.

The ev

more damning.

But Crippen denies the r

are those of his missing wife,

claiming they must have been buried long before he lived in the house.

The problem facing Scotland Yard, when they found the remains in the cellar

was of course trying to establish identity.

The late-19th century is a time of rapid scientific progress.

The discipline of forensics -

the application of science

to solving crime, is developing fast.

In the year of Cora Crippen's disappearance,

a young forensic pathologist is rising through the ranks at Scotland Yard.

Sir Bernard Spilsbury was a very knowledgeable man, very professional.

If he was used in a prosecution, it was never good news for defense.

Because if Sir Bernard Spilsbury said that you committed the murder,

chances are the jury would agree with him.

The Met knew precisely who they could turn to

when they were faced with a particularly difficult case of homicide.

Among the technological advances by then available to pathologists

is the microscope.

Spilsbury would be among the first to use it to prove the fact of murder.

the microscope to study the formation of scar tissue -

skills which are to prove invaluable in the Crippen case.

What was fou

cellar was simply viscera,

internal organs and bits of flesh.

But you can learn a lot from things like that.

Cora Crippen is know

to have had a hysterectomy

which left a scar on her lower abdomen.

The microscope reveals a similar scar on the remains in the cellar.

This alleged scar on this piece of flesh,

this was one of the strongest pieces of evidence

to suggest that the corpse in the cellar was that of Cora Crippen.

And this scar

an absolute battleground

between the prosecution and the defense.

Spilsbury's evidence proves compelling.

Crippen

murder and hanged.

Once again, Scotland Yard is breaking new ground,

science and fore

coming together

to prove Crippen's guilt 'beyond reasonable doubt'.

This same first decade of the 20th century

sees the Met develop further crime-detection techniques at Scotland Yard.

A few years earlier, in 1905,

the tr

Stratton Brothers

has also been a first for the Metropolitan police detectives.

Since the turn of the century,

the Yard had been working on the practical application

of the greatest leap forward in criminal detection: fingerprinting.

The fact that no two fingerprints are the same has long been known.

But Scotland Yard figures out ho

to help solve crime.

One of the things they were brilliant at,

was how to harness the technology through bureaucracy.

So although they w

pioneers

of the actual notion of fingerprinting,

they were pioneers of

as a crime detection method.

In 1905, a gang in Deptford, Southeast London,

would be caught out by the Met's new method.

The Stratton brothers know evidence of physical identification

is - up until then -

the only way the police will be likely to convict them.

So when they burgle a shop in Deptford High Street,

they know exactly what to do.

To make sure they weren't recognized

they cut masks out of stockings and they put the masks over their faces.

So the Stratton brothers decided they were gonna get rich quick,

they decided they were gonna break into a shop.

The brothers raid the till,

kill both the owners and escape.

Having removed their masks, they are seen leaving the shop.

The police bring them to trial.

But the Strattons have murdered the only eyewitnesses to the crime.

They believe they have got away with it.

Unbeknown to the Strattons,

Scotland Yard sends its newly-formed fingerprint team down to the crime scene.

They find a bloody thumbprint on the shop's cash box.

denied the offense

their fingerprints were found in the cash box.

They thought they were gonna be safe and free because they hadn't confessed.

The only evidence against them was fingerprints

which they really didn't understand.

But the jury

And once they were given a demonstration by prosecution counsel

they found them guilty.

The judge se

Stratton brothers to death.

The bloody thumbprint found by Scotland Yard

is the first fingerprint evidence to convict a British murderer.

A year later Scotland Yard set up the fingerprint registry

and by 1934, almost 400,000 identifications have been made.

And in 1963 it is fingerprinting

that nails the gang behind Britain's most famous crime:

the Great Train Robbery.

The gang holds up a mail train

and makes off with a staggering amount of cash:

more than half a billion

dollars in today's money.

The

of carrying out a crime like that

were London-based, underworld characters.

The hardcore of that gang were all very successful,

professional criminals.

They were all good

So, Scotland Yard,

of course, very quickly,

within two or three days of the crime taking place

had essentially taken the whole thing over.

To outwit their pursuers, the gang plan to lie low

with their fortune, in a nearby farm.

As they wait for police attention to die down,

they combat boredom by playing Monopoly -

with real money.

But fr

on police radios

they realize there's a suspicion they're still hiding nearby.

Running scared, they flee the farm earlier tha

They did

all the time

and people even had the job of sanitizing the house afterwards.

But they were not as forensically aware, if you like,

as they perhaps should have been.

When the fingerprint team move in

they find that one thing has been overlooked.

The Monopoly board is covered in prints.

It was fingerprints that s

the Great Train Robbery.

All the evidence against the the suspects was the fact

that their fingerprints were found at Leatherslade farm.

And it is this evidence that eventually convicts them.

Throughout the 20th century,

Scotland Yard exploits advancing technology.

And arguably, the invention which brings the most radical change is the motor car.

1903.

The first police car arrives at Scotland Yard.

But it's the inception of the aptly named Flying Squad in 1919

which makes full use of its speed.

The Flying Squad could get around London quickly,

respond to situations very quickly.

The Flying Squad work in such a way

that they will be at the right place at the right time

to catch robbers red-handed.

By the 1920s the Flying Squad's are screeching round London at speeds topping 40mph.

A decade later, the arrival of state-of-the-art radio

gives them communication on the go.

And by the 1950s the Fly

Squad is the jewel in the crown of Scotland Yard,

making 1,000 arrests a year.

Meanwh

the Metropolitan Police have continued to swell.

And by

the 20,000-strong force is on the move again -

to the premises it occupies to this day -

New Scotland Yard.

The first phase of the move 'This is the new information room

where for the first time calls can be dealt with directly by operators

in immediate contact with patrol cars.'

But the glamour doesn't last long.

The esteemed Flying Squad detectives are about to fall from grace.

spent a lot of time

in the London crime communities rubbing shoulders with criminals.

In the 1970s Scotland Yard officers are convicted

and jailed on corruption charges involving bribery,

prostitution and pornography.

corruption was unmasked

and a number of Scotland Yard officers went to prison.

But by the end of the 1990s,

the Flying Squad is back on form.

By then they've perfected the use

of another crucial crime-fighting tool:

video su

In February 2000, Flying Squad detectives hear rumors

that a major armed robbery is about to take place in London.

Scotland Yard knew who the members of this outfit were,

so essentially they were

a team of armed robbers,

looking for an opportunity to arrest them red-handed.

But with no clue as to the gang's target,

head of the Flying Squad, Jon Shatford,

puts them under intensive video surveillance.

We knew we were facing very, very dangerous criminals.

The gang has a distinguishing feature.

It's known to use boats as getaway veh

So when the Flying

films a speed boat arriving at the gang's HQ,

Shatford starts searching for riverside targets.

Then a breakthrough: an undercover officer

films a gang member visiting London's latest tourist attraction -

the Millennium Dome exhibition center.

All of a sudden I had this vision in my mind

of the River Thames that ran around the Dome.

Now bear in mind we were looking for ro

that were using the river as an escape.

And from that moment all my thinking,

everything seemed to go into slow motion.

The police soon realize that the Dome itself isn't the target.

Rather, the robbers are after a high-value prize

which lies inside the building.

This is the Millennium Star.

This flawl

is thought to be worth

a staggering three quarters of a billion dollars.

Back in 2000, it is part of an exhibition in the Dome.

gang go into the exhibition

of the Millennium Diamond itself,

and that absolutely

convinced us.

That was their target.

To catch the gang red-handed

Shatford sets up covert operations on the Dome.

Watching crowds entering the enormous structure

requires the biggest secret surveillance operation in the Flying Squad's history.

I knew my job was on the line if this went wrong.

Every move we made whenever we were looking at a place to be,

what we had to bear in mind is that the criminals

were doing what we were doing from another perspective.

We had people at the top of cranes.

We had people in the tower block across there looking down,

all looking for that vital clue.

Next, Scotland Yard's surveillance tapes

show the arrival of a bulldozer known as a JCB.

The gang are taking it to a hideout less than five miles from the Dome.

This is the industrial area of Plumstead.

Now tucked away, just back here is an old coal yard,

We were actually, I had

this embankment here

which was very difficult to get to,

and we could see them through these gates here,

if you just back through here.

Now the trouble is with an area like this

is everyone seems to know everyone else

and, to be blunt,

many of them are involved in a little bit of skullduggery.

So the last thing they want is the police around here.

November 7th.

After months of surveillance and several false starts,

setting out towards the Dome.

We got a message: the JCB was on the move.

We were game on.

At the Dome, Shatford's team is ready and waiting.

We had

that side and along there

and further down the river.

They were all prepared to just move in

and descend in a circular motion.

And inside,

Flying Squad detectives are hidden everywhere.

At the time I was working

on one of the specialist firearms teams

and we were brought in by the Flying Squad

to assist in planning a safe way of arresting the suspects

during the commission of the offence.

I had special engineers cons

Behind the false wall we had firearms officers from Scotland Yard,

and they were just waiting for the command there.

There was 17 of us, I think, and we were smuggled in

in the early hours of the morning.

8:45am.

The boat is moving

..and the JCB is approaching the Dome.

We had the JCB now, dr

We still didn't know what it was going to do.

It drove down here - the road was slightly different then.

But it pulled up alongside.

And then quite unexpectedly it crashed through the outer fence down here.

(Crashing)

The JCB smashes through the wall of the

The JCB swiveled around outside where the diamond was, outside the vault.

There was suddenly smoke grenades thrown from the JCB.

Some of the gang have entered the room containing the diamond exhibit.

But, luckily it is housed in bomb-proo

The glass that displayed it,

apparently would withstand military-grade explosives.

That's what we were told.

They aim a nail gun They fire it and with that they follow in

with a sledgehammer and they move in and make a hole.

And it's on that moment, and I'm just almost counting,

'Get your hand on it, go on, get your hand on it.'

(Glass smashing)

We were waiting for the words: 'Attack, attack, attack.'

And when those words were given

we ran out onto the concourse.

My particular role was to concent

and the driver.

Thankfully, he surrendered.

Out on the river armed police swoop on the getaway boat.

Stun grenades were thrown inside the vault.

They were deafening, so the gang inside must have thought

the world was ending here.

The armed police are surrounding them

and then we had them trapped.

There was neat holes in front of each of the diamonds

ready for them just t

This was an amazing success.

This was Scotland Yard the best criminal brains, and we beat them.

It is a good reflection

on what the Met's good at,

in particular the Flying Squad.

They will target the people who think they're above detection.

Had they not been up against someone like the Flying Squad

they probably would have been successful.

Scotland Yard has been at the forefront of crime-fighting for nearly 200 years.

21st-century criminality is forcing the Met

to up its game yet again.

(Siren wails)

Scotland Yard's business is always in motion.

It's always evolving and the pace of change

has probably never been quicker.

They've just got such a depth of experience - the Yard.

It makes them respected around the world.

Scotland Yard continues to invent

to keep it one step ahead of the world's cleverest criminals.

The history goes back a long time

but it keeps, if you like, reshaping to adapt

to how life is now.

And it's gotta continue doing that.

Scotland Yard today is a techn

sophisticated organization.

It leads the world still in murder invest

It leads the world in counter

That's what Scotland Yard are very good at.

They've been incredibly successful at stopping plots.

Scotland Yard remains the vigilant protector of London's citizens,

striking fear

in the hearts of those

who cross over to the wrong side of the law.