Barrage Of Thefts Hits Rare Book Rooms
- By Michael Stillman
Grainy surveillance viedo captured Peter Bellwood "checking out" library books
By Michael Stillman
On December 17, 2004, several rare and quite valuable books were stolen from Transylvania University. That's Transylvania U. as in Transylvania, Kentucky, not Dracula's old hometown. These were not ordinary volumes. According to the Lexington Herald-Leader, there was a first edition of Darwin's Origin of the Species, a collection of twenty sketches or pencil drawings by Audubon in preparation for the 1856 edition of his Birds of America, an "exceedingly rare" 16th century natural history with hand-painted woodcuts, and a 1425 illuminated manuscript. They were reportedly valued for insurance purposes at "several hundred thousand dollars," but likely would bring more in the open market. Certainly a 1425 illuminated manuscript sounds like one that could break the bank. Transylvania University offered a $5,000 reward for their return, but that is unlikely to move the thief if he or she has any familiarity with the going market for these items.
On December 22, 2004, Peter Bellwood was sentenced to 4 1/2 years in prison for thefts from the National Library in Wales, according to the BBC. This was not the first time Bellwood's interest in rare books has resulted in trouble with the law, and his arrest has led to investigations at other libraries in Europe. Bellwood's activities were particularly nefarious as he carried a razor with him to "work." No, he didn't slice up any librarians, but he did cut up quite a few rare old books. Bellwood's modus operandi was to cut maps out of old books and apparently sell them on the black market. No one suspected him, despite the presence of security cameras and the fact that Bellwood, who signed into the library under his own name, had recently been released from prison for similar activities. He disarmed any suspicions of his honesty early on by handing a bill worth around $50 he claimed to have found in a book over to a librarian. It was not until a warning came from the National Library of Denmark, which discovered Bellwood's activities too late to apprehend him, that the Wales Library realized what was on its surveillance videos. Denmark still wants to prosecute him, and others may as well. The Royal Library of Stockholm, having discovered that Bellwood was a visitor there as well, has also found maps missing from its books.
All in all, Bellwood apparently made off with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of maps. Maps were taken from atlases produced in the 16th and 17th centuries by the likes of Mercator, Blaeu, Jansson and Speed. What is even more tragic is that almost none of the maps has been found, and it appears unlikely that all that many will be recovered. Great books and atlases are probably destroyed forever. And as for his illicit gains, it appears that Bellwood lost most of it betting on horses.
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Barrage Of Thefts Hits Rare Book Rooms
- By Michael Stillman
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Bellwood wasn't the only individual to be sentenced to prison for book theft in December. On the 17th, 69-year-old Eva Moeller-Kristensen was sentenced to 3 years in prison for selling 77 stolen books. Mrs. Moeller-Kristensen is the widow of the former head librarian at the Denmark Royal Library. Frede Moeller-Kristensen had helped himself to many volumes from the library in the 1960s and 1970s, but had never tried to dispose of them. You might call him a "collector." When he died, his wife was faced with the question faced by many widows of collectors: what do you do with this stuff? She made the seemingly logical decision that other widows might make with such a valuable collection. She asked Christie's to sell them. Unfortunately for her, Christie's became suspicious, tracked down the source of some of the volumes, and turned the widow in. So while the actual thief was never caught or punished, he did leave his wife, son, and daughter-in-law (the latter two were accomplices) an inheritance they wish they had never received.
The Local, an online publication from Sweden, reports that a 48-year-old man who died in a violent explosion in his apartment on December 8 had admitted to book theft a few days earlier. The explosion, at first thought to be a tragic accident, was instead a suicide. The thief was evidently known and trusted at Uppsala University's Carolina Rediviva Library. Some of their books were found in the wreckage. The stolen books were said to be from the 16th and 17th centuries.
According to the New Zealand Herald, Lee Simpson was sentenced to 5 1/2 years in prison on January 22 for years of stealing books from libraries, altering them to disguise their ownership, and selling them to unsuspecting buyers, often online. Apparently his late father had been a book collector, so Simpson was able to make it appear that the books had come from his estate. It is believed that he had cleared over $150,000 over the years, much to support a gambling habit.
Finally, Peter Breithaupt, a former night supervisor at the Kenyon College Library in Ohio, recently pleaded guilty to selling books stolen from that library. While Breithaupt did not have access to the library's special collections, he was able to persuade custodians to let him in unsupervised. His case touches on a fear perhaps even greater than that of the traditional black market: eBay. Breithaupt made his money by posting his books for sale in the vast, unsupervised ocean of anonymity that has become a means of disposing of stolen goods. The listings are so numerous that it is hard for anyone to spot the illicit ones, crime victims, law enforcement, and eBay alike. Fortunately, there are always some eyes on the lookout, and if you go to the well too many times, you get caught. This happened to Breithaupt when someone from Georgia noticed a copy of a book from Kenyon's library for sale. Unfortunately for Kenyon, this didn't happen until 50 books had already been sold, with a value estimated at over $50,000. The best was a 1528 copy of Ptolemy's Almagest, sold for $4,750.
What can we conclude from this recent spate of library theft cases? First the good news, for collectors, dealers, and even the libraries: the old and rare books they have been collecting have become quite valuable. Thieves are attracted to value, not bargains. And since most aren't collectors themselves, there is obviously a healthy market for this material.
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Barrage Of Thefts Hits Rare Book Rooms
- By Michael Stillman
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So much for the positive. The more serious, and not so pleasant issue is security. Presumably, the security is tighter than it was when Thomas Wise was slicing pages out of antiquarian books at the beginning of the last century. He never had to deal with security cameras. Still, basic instincts to trust apparently honest people, plus the tendency to let down your guard, opened the doors to the rare book rooms to these dishonorable people. A seemingly scrupulously honest researcher, a trusted employee, is all it takes and the defenses go down. A thief commits his crime in full view of the camera and no one ever looks at the film. All of the gates and locks in the world won't do much good if the fox is allowed in the henhouse unsupervised. The unfortunate reality is everyone must be treated like a thief because just enough of us are.
There is one factor that may help to keep rare book collections safer in the future, but this has other potentially more significant ramifications as well. With the announcement last month that Google has begun a massive digitization process of antiquarian books, a process already started by others, in time there will be less need for researchers to access the physical books themselves. Perhaps those studying watermarks and binding techniques may still need to see the physical books, but for the typical researcher interested in text, or other plainly visible features such as typefaces, access to the books will no longer be necessary. They can view the books from the comfort of their own home online. The antique books themselves can remain securely on the library's shelves.
Of course this leads to that other question: why, in a digitized world, does the library even need to have these books? What is the point of having vast sums of money tied up in books that remain unused and unseen in hidden, secure, and costly climate-controlled vaults? Shouldn't that money be used for something that will actually benefit the library's patrons? Perhaps that's what Peter Bellwood was thinking when he helped himself to the valuable parts of those old texts, though I doubt that such philosophical questions were foremost on his mind. However, these issues will need to be on the minds of rare book librarians in the years ahead, and it is not likely to be pleasant for those who maintain these wonderful collections. Assumptions about libraries and books that have stood for centuries will be challenged by technology that compacts what used to be centuries worth of change into a few short years.
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