Category — Map Theft

A recent article in the Financial Times of London delves into the possible motivations of those who steal rare books, antique maps and manuscripts. “What drives people to steal precious books“, by Tim Richardson, examines the exploits of some recent map thieves, such as E. Forbes Smiley and Farhad Hakimzadeh.

The article points out that for libraries,

…such thefts can be extremely difficult to notice. Detective Sergeant Vernon Rapley, a police officer with 23 years’ experience, has for the past eight years headed the Metropolitan Police’s Art and Antiques Unit.

“Book theft is very hard to quantify because very often pages are cut and it’s not noticed for years,” says Rapley. “Often we come across pages from books [in hauls of recovered property] and we work back from there.”

There is a call for libraries to take particular security measures and for honest library users to be vigilant. The article also touches upon the problem of “insider theft”:

A more recent “trusted insider” case is also one of the most shocking. In February, David Slade, a respected Bristol-based dealer and former president of the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association, was jailed for 28 months for stealing 68 books worth £230,000 from Sir Evelyn de Rothschild, who had engaged him in 2001 to catalogue part of the family collection at Ascott, Buckinghamshire.

[tags]e. forbes smiley, map theft, antique maps [/tags]

Scalpel happy and wealthy British book collector Farhad Hakimzadeh has been sentenced to two years in prison for slicing out pages and maps from rare books in the British Library. The books, most dating to the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, appeared to center around  “The engagement by West European travellers with Mesopotamia, Persia and the Mogul empire — roughly the area from modern Syria to Bangladesh.”

“Some of the stolen pages were recovered at his home address but many more have been lost forever.”

Read more about how sleuths zeroed in on Hakimzadeh in this BBC News article.

[tags]antique maps, map theft, british library[/tags]

A 1612 map of Canada (then “New France”) by Samuel de Champlain is to be auctioned by Southeby’s in England next month. The map is billed by Sotheby’s as “perhaps the most important single map” in Canadian history. Harvard University experts have determined that the particular copy of the rare antique map is not the copy discovered to be missing from Harvard’s rare-book library in 2005, presumed stolen by E. Forbes Smiley. There was some concern by Harvard that the map in question may have been the stolen copy owned by Harvard.

The antique map of Canada by Samuel de Champlain is expected to fetch $80,000 for its undisclosed owner.

Related news items:

• Sotheby’s London Will Sell Perhaps The Most Important Single Map In The History Of Canada
• Harvard eyes 1612 Canada map in auction
• Rare map of Canada under scrutiny after Harvard thefts
• Champlain map cleared for auction
• Champlain map ready for auction 

[tags]antique maps, samuel de champlain, new france, antique map auctions, antique map of canada, E. Forbes Smiley[/tags]

A 526-year-old map, stolen from the National Library of Spain last year, has been returned to Spain by Australian authorities. The map was from a rare edition of the atlas Cosmographia. It was recovered in Austraila last year after 18 documents were stolen from Spain’s National Library in a much publicized robbery.

See the full story, ”Australia returns rare 1482 map to Spain” at the Sydney Morning Herald’s web site.

The Austrailian Broadcasting Corporation’s web site also has a news item on the return of the map, including a 3 minute audio clip on the 15th Century map and it’s return to the Spanish.

[tags]map theft, stolen maps, antique maps, Cosmographia, Ptolemy[/tags]

Reuters is reporting that 11 of 19 maps stolen from the Spanish National Library at the end of August have been recovered. César ‘Boxcutter Boy’ Gómez Rivero surrendered eight stolen maps to police in Argentina via his lawyer earlier.

11 of the maps have been recovered in a cooperative effort by police in the United Kingdom, Australia, Argentina, and the United States.

[tags]stolen maps, map theft[/tags]

…on the maps stolen from the Spanish National Library in the Timesonline and, on César Gómez Rivero, the boy with the Stanley boxcutter.