Scotland’s nationwide archive has traced the mysterious disappearance of greater than 3,000 historic paperwork over a interval of 30 years to a historical past professor with an all-consuming curiosity in stamps.
The theft started to unravel when a Nationwide Data of Scotland archivist attended an public sale in London in 1994. There, he found that 200 of the gadgets on the market belonged to the archive, some nonetheless marked with their NRS reference numbers.
The gadgets, 3,100 gadgets in complete, primarily household, property and enterprise correspondence, have been traced again to an educational and archivist, Prof David Macmillan, who died in 1987. Born in Ayrshire, Macmillan studied historical past on the College of Glasgow earlier than instructing on the College of Sydney after which Trent College in Ontario, Canada, the place he was a professor for 20 years.
Data confirmed that he made annual visits to the NRS archives as a person from 1969 till 1980, when he was caught taking a single merchandise from the archive in Edinburgh and his entry was instantly revoked. It was assumed on the time that this was an remoted incident.
However the scale of his thefts grew to become obvious in 2012, when a researcher noticed a reference in a web-based catalogue at Trent College to an merchandise he thought might have belonged in Scotland and raised issues. NRS archivists went on to find about 2,900 gadgets which had been stolen by Macmillan after which gifted to Trent College’s archives after his loss of life.
Though Prof Macmillan was not convicted of any offences, NRS is assured that he carried out the thefts, which specialists consider have been motivated by his curiosity in stamps and postmarks. The correspondence he took was not of excessive monetary or historic worth, and it stays a thriller why somebody whose personal working life was sustained by way of archives would abuse the belief of those establishments in such a blatant method.
Dr Alan Borthwick, head of medieval and early fashionable information at NRS, mentioned: “In essence he was on the lookout for correspondence, particularly from components of the world the place Scots have been concerned normally private or enterprise issues, but additionally routine home correspondence, which could prove to have uncommon postmarks – a bit magpie-like, he was attracted by one thing ‘shiny’ even when most individuals couldn’t see the attraction.”
NRS now has nearly all its paperwork again of their rightful place, overseen by extra strong safety measures than Macmillan encountered, which defend its assortment of 38m paperwork spanning almost 1,000 years of Scottish historical past.
Of the three,100 gadgets returned, about 2,000 have been stolen from the NRS archives, with others taken immediately from different establishments throughout the UK together with the Nationwide Archives and the College of Glasgow, the College of Edinburgh and the Nationwide Library of Scotland.
About 500 gadgets have been discovered to belong to collections held by non-public homeowners, and 100 gadgets stay of unknown origin.
Alison Byrne, chief govt of NRS, mentioned: “These historic thefts have been on an unprecedented scale and carried out we consider by one particular person who was an everyday customer to the establishments he stole from.
“Due to the extremely detailed and painstaking work of NRS archivists, we’ve been capable of restore these information to their authentic collections and guarantee they’re accessible for examine as soon as once more.”
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