ncr
27-10-06, 12:13 AM
Map Thief Jailed (http://www.asmmag.com/ASM/content/2006/ASM_037/main_news_8.html) - Asian Surveying & Mapping, 20 October 2006
A US citizen who stole maps worth US $3 million must pay back about $2 million and return most of the maps he stole. He will also spend three and a half years in jail. E. Forbes Smiley III is a 50-year-old dealer in rare maps. Judge Arterton of the US federal court said that she had taken Smiley's remorse into consideration when sentencing him. He had also made the effort to return some of the stolen maps to the institutions he robbed. Smiley pleaded guilty to stealing 97 rare maps, worth about $3 million, from the British Library, and from leading US institutions.
The British Library was created in 1972 by combining the library departments of a number of different British institutions. To the general public, the best known of these is the library department of the British Museum. The Museum's Department of Printed Books was founded in 1753. This was also the year that the museum was founded. Over the next two hundred and fifty years, the library of the British Museum has grown into one of the largest in the world. Some of the great minds of the 20th century, including Marx, Lenin, George Bernard Shaw and Bertrand Russell, have studied in its reading room. So did Mr Smiley.
Smiley was convicted of 'razoring' books. This refers to the practice of borrowing a book from the collection and removing valuable parts of it with a razor. The book is then returned, usually with the attendants being totally unaware of the damage. Atlases of rare maps are especially vulnerable to the practice. British authorities say that Smiley razored the Apian map from a volume owned by Thomas Cranmer. Cranmer was a 16th century Archbishop of Canterbury. The map is significant because it is believed to be the first that shows America as a separate continent. The German cartographer Peter Apian drew it in 1520.
But library authorities are not satisfied with the sentence. Ahead of Smiley's sentencing, Robert Goldman, a lawyer retained by the British Library, had called for the dealer to be imprisoned for eight years. This is two to three years more than is called for in US sentencing guidelines. 'The harm caused by Smiley transcends monetary loss', Goldman said. Smiley, from Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, consulted about 33 books at the British Library between June 2004 and March 2005. He cut maps from only four. Only the Apian map has been found.
A rare first edition of Sir William Alexander's 1624 map of New England and Canada, and a 1578 map from George Best's A True Discourse of the Late Voyages of Martin Frobisher have been discovered in the collections of a London dealer and a US collector. Both men bought the maps from Smiley. They have not been returned to the library.
A US citizen who stole maps worth US $3 million must pay back about $2 million and return most of the maps he stole. He will also spend three and a half years in jail. E. Forbes Smiley III is a 50-year-old dealer in rare maps. Judge Arterton of the US federal court said that she had taken Smiley's remorse into consideration when sentencing him. He had also made the effort to return some of the stolen maps to the institutions he robbed. Smiley pleaded guilty to stealing 97 rare maps, worth about $3 million, from the British Library, and from leading US institutions.
The British Library was created in 1972 by combining the library departments of a number of different British institutions. To the general public, the best known of these is the library department of the British Museum. The Museum's Department of Printed Books was founded in 1753. This was also the year that the museum was founded. Over the next two hundred and fifty years, the library of the British Museum has grown into one of the largest in the world. Some of the great minds of the 20th century, including Marx, Lenin, George Bernard Shaw and Bertrand Russell, have studied in its reading room. So did Mr Smiley.
Smiley was convicted of 'razoring' books. This refers to the practice of borrowing a book from the collection and removing valuable parts of it with a razor. The book is then returned, usually with the attendants being totally unaware of the damage. Atlases of rare maps are especially vulnerable to the practice. British authorities say that Smiley razored the Apian map from a volume owned by Thomas Cranmer. Cranmer was a 16th century Archbishop of Canterbury. The map is significant because it is believed to be the first that shows America as a separate continent. The German cartographer Peter Apian drew it in 1520.
But library authorities are not satisfied with the sentence. Ahead of Smiley's sentencing, Robert Goldman, a lawyer retained by the British Library, had called for the dealer to be imprisoned for eight years. This is two to three years more than is called for in US sentencing guidelines. 'The harm caused by Smiley transcends monetary loss', Goldman said. Smiley, from Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, consulted about 33 books at the British Library between June 2004 and March 2005. He cut maps from only four. Only the Apian map has been found.
A rare first edition of Sir William Alexander's 1624 map of New England and Canada, and a 1578 map from George Best's A True Discourse of the Late Voyages of Martin Frobisher have been discovered in the collections of a London dealer and a US collector. Both men bought the maps from Smiley. They have not been returned to the library.