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Mystery of library’s missing maps
Edward Forbes Smiley III’s raids on eminent institutions’ historic documents may be read like a Hollywood thriller, but the British Library is less than entertained, writes Richard Osley
AS international map thieves go, Edward Forbes Smiley III is just as a Hollywood script might have it – a dastardly opportunist whose brazen larceny was disguised by his impeccable blazers and scholarly gold-rimmed glasses.
The 50-year-old has an extensive knowledge of historic cartography and gave the appearance of a serious researcher when he contacted librarians asking for their help.
In reality, he was using a scalpel to whisk away some of the world’s rarest documents.
By the time of his downfall – he was caught when he left a scalpel blade on the floor of Yale’s Beinecke rare book room – at least 97 historic maps from a host of eminent libraries in New York, Chicago, Boston and London had been lifted and in most cases sold to collectors.
Smiley apologised but could hardly muster an explanation as he was sentenced to three and half years in jail last October.
But for all the mystique that surrounds his unrestrained cleptomania, the British Library is sickened rather than entertained. It believes that Smiley struck four times in its vaults on two special missions, one in March 2004, another in June 2005. Not so, says the thief, who only admits to stealing one map from the library’s headquarters in King’s Cross.
The conflicting versions of evidence will severely hamper the library’s chances of gaining compensation and will undoubtedly make it harder for librarians to track down the three outstanding maps.
Last month, a judge in Connecticut raised the restitution order that Smiley must pay in compensation to $2.3 million. It will go to dealers who unwittingly bought stolen maps from him and then volunteered to give them back.
Dr Clive Field has retired from his job as director of collections at the library since the case concluded in the courts. He travelled to the US to tell prosecutors how Smiley had betrayed the British Library.
“The particular copies of the maps that The British Library knows or believes that Mr Smiley stole while visiting its flagship building in London have the highest possible bibliographic pedigrees,” he says. “They lie at the very heart of the joint history of Britain and the United States, making their loss particularly grievous and the vandalism that accompanied their theft especially harmful.
“The financial loss to The British Library is estimated as being about $200,000, and to this sum should be added the enormous costs that have been incurred over the centuries in housing, conserving and making the maps available.”
The only explanation for Smiley’s campaign, which went on unnoticed for eight years, was offered by prosecutors who said that he resented some of the world’s leading academic institutions, possibly for what he perceived as a lofty or snobbish attitude. Some investigators said he had a strange sense that, due to his expertise in cartography, he had a right of ownership.
Smiley ran a gallery in New York before moving to the upmarket Martha’s Vineyard. Several stolen maps were found at his home during a police search. An appeal has gone out to collectors and experts across the world to come forward if they know where the missing maps are.
Dr Field’s successor is Ronald Milne. He too is insistent that the latest judgment will do nothing to deter thieves.
“We attribute to him the loss of four maps from printed volumes in our collection, but Smiley admitted to the theft of only one of these maps, the Peter Apian world map of 1520,” he says. “It’s an uncoloured woodcut worth around $100,000, which has now been returned to the library. The theft of the three other maps which Smiley does not admit to but which our records to him, are a George Best world map of 1578, and two different editions of the Alexander map of New England and the Canadian Maritimes dating from 1620s. All four maps, in addition to having great historic and cartographic signifiance, have very distinguished provenances.”
Mr Milne adds: “The term of imprisonment imposed – 42 months – is equivalent to around just 12 days for each of the 97 he admitted to stealing. The increased level of financial restitution still does not adequately reflect the seriousness of the offences Nor does it represent a commesureate punishment of Smiley for his serial thefts or a serious deterrant to other would-be thieves of cultural property. Six maps have been lost to research and many of the maps he stole were altered to remove identifiable detail and provenance.”
If Smiley did take the three remaining maps he is the only person who is likely to be able to help track them down. For the moment at least, he is keeping quiet.
British library treasures
The Apian map
THE volume from which the Apian map (pictured left) came was owned by Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, and still bears his signature on the opening page. Cranmer was the man who precipitated England’s break with Rome by marrying King Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn in 1533.
The map was
presented by King George II to the newly created British
Museum in 1757 and passed to the British Library on its creation in 1973.
The Best map
THE Best map comes from a tract describing the voyages of Martin Frobisher in 1576-78. It shows the North-west passage, to the north of Canada, from the Atlantic to the Pacific that Frobisher thought he had found.
The map makes apparent how the Elizabethans wished to see the world and why they were prepared to send expensive expeditions one after the other to these desolate frozen
regions.
The Alexander map
THE Alexander map is a visualisaton of the earliest attempt to found a New Scotland or Nova Scotia side by side with New England, and it gives the names of the intended lessees. This copy was bequeathed to the British Museum by Thomas Grenville (1755-1846). In 1782, he had been the first Englishman to make contact with the American ex-colonists, in the person of Benjamin Franklin, in the negotiations that were to lead to Britain’s recognition of American independence under the Treaty of Paris.
The second Alexander map
THE second Alexander map comes from a volume that the East India Company used as an important propaganda instrument in their struggle for dominance in the area with the Dutch. This copy remained with the company and its successor, the India Office of the British Government, until it was transferred to the British Library with the company’s records in the 1980s. |
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