A VICTORIAN Whodunnit will be taking place at a museum, when visitors can use techniques deployed by Victorian detectives to solve historic crimes.

Ripon’s Workhouse Museum will be opening up for free on Saturday, September 9, when people can take part in the murder mystery.

Visitors can follow the clues through the Workhouse main block and work out whether it was the master in schoolroom with an abacus or the porter in the pantry with a pie dish or perhaps another suspect altogether.

Visitors can also take their own mugshots, learn about crime scene photography, use a microscope, and find out how to detect arsenic and more.

Ripon’s Workhouse was where many poor Victorian families ended up when there was nowhere else to go and times were hard.

As well as telling their stories, the museum contains the former vagrant night cells and the newly opened main block now contains the master’s study and dining room, pantry, the schoolroom and the inmates’ dining hall.

In addition to free entry to the Workhouse Museum on Saturday, there will also be a special reduced price ticket to the Prison & Police Museum and Courthouse Museum on sale as well.

All three Ripon museums are within easy walking distance of each other and provide a glimpse into law and order of the past.

For more details about the museums, visit riponmuseums.co.uk