London MurderMap shows deaths near you..

A nice way to wind up for the weekend… if you live in London, and want to know if anyone’s been murdered near you, you can now find out on a nice easy-to-use Google Maps interface.

Provided by MurderMap.co.uk it uses pins and a standard Google map to locate where murders happen, colour-coded by type of weapon used. Not surprisingly, knife and gun crime are the biggest causes on the data that has been uploaded so far.

It’s a grim site, but it is always interesting to be able to read data like this and the aim of the makers is that it becomes useful to residents, town planners, people in criminal law. Each marker comes up with a picture, a name and a link to the case history.

From what I can see, the murders registered so far are only from the past 2-3 years and um, those attributed to Jack the Ripper, but the aim of the site is ambitious – to mark everyone who has ever died violently in London since records in the Victorian era. They say: “On its completion, our online database will contain details of every murder and manslaughter committed in London from the crimes of Jack the Ripper to the present day.”

Interesting? Yes.