A black widow spider [Chris Yarzab]

THE Covid lockdown means I haven’t been over for a rummage through the new releases in the public records office in Kew for more than two years. That place is full of fun stories from the past.

One of my favourites is the case of the worrying detective in wartime London who feared a plot to release a collection of venomous spiders from their glass enclosures at London Zoo.

As they searched for the culprits behind a sporadic bombing campaign by the IRA in 1940, senior detectives urged the zoo in Regent’s Park to destroy all of its Black Widow spiders before somebody set them loose.

In a letter, sent in February of that year to government officials and bosses at the zoo, Inspector Christopher Rolfe was unrestrained in his demand for immediate action, describing the spiders as “loathsome”.

He said: “The escape of these huge, ugly and dangerous spiders would have, undoubtedly a very unnerving effect upon the majority of people in this country.”

The 82-year-old letter was released under Freedom of Information rules and is now stored at the archives in west London.

It certainly provides an insight on how police response over terrorism has changed over eight decades.

Inspector Rolfe continued: “The only satisfactory safeguard would be the complete elimination of these pests before the contingency happens. Otherwise, the police authorities may have, possibly, the distasteful task of hunting for some of these loathsome insects before they have had a chance to breed.”

There is no reply by the zoo on record and although the letter was noted by the Home Office, there is no record of any spiders being destroyed.

More stories from the public records office will appear every now and again in this column; I can’t resist a dip into our city’s past.