Scotland’s national archive has traced the mysterious disappearance of more than 3,000 historical documents over a period of 30 years to a history professor with an all-consuming interest in stamps.
The theft began to unravel when a National Records of Scotland archivist attended an auction in London in 1994. There, he discovered that 200 of the items for sale belonged to the archive, some still marked with their NRS reference numbers.
The items, 3,100 items in total, mainly family, estate and business correspondence, were traced back to an academic and archivist, Prof David Macmillan, who died in 1987. Born in Ayrshire, Macmillan studied history at the University of Glasgow before teaching at the University of Sydney and then Trent University in Ontario, Canada, where he was a professor for 20 years.
Records showed that he made annual visits to the NRS archives as a user from 1969 until 1980, when he was caught taking a single item from the archive in Edinburgh and his access was immediately revoked. It was assumed at the time that this was an isolated incident.
But the scale of his thefts became apparent in 2012, when a researcher saw a reference in an online catalogue at Trent University to an item he thought may have belonged in Scotland and raised concerns. NRS archivists went on to discover about 2,900 items which had been stolen by Macmillan and then gifted to Trent University’s archives after his death.
Although Prof Macmillan was not convicted of any offences, NRS is confident that he carried out the thefts, which experts believe were motivated by his interest in stamps and postmarks. The correspondence he took was not of high financial or historical value, and it remains a mystery why someone whose own working life was sustained by the use of archives would abuse the trust of these institutions in such a blatant manner.
Dr Alan Borthwick, head of medieval and early modern records at NRS, said: “In essence he was looking for correspondence, especially from parts of the world where Scots were involved in general personal or business matters, but also routine domestic correspondence, which might turn out to have unusual postmarks – a bit magpie-like, he was attracted by something ‘shiny’ even if most people couldn’t see the attraction.”
NRS now has almost all its documents back in their rightful position, overseen by more robust security measures than Macmillan encountered, which protect its collection of 38m documents spanning nearly 1,000 years of Scottish history.
Of the 3,100 items returned, about 2,000 were stolen from the NRS archives, with others taken directly from other institutions across the UK including the National Archives and the University of Glasgow, the University of Edinburgh and the National Library of Scotland.
About 500 items were found to belong to collections held by private owners, and 100 items remain of unknown origin.
Alison Byrne, chief executive of NRS, said: “These historical thefts were on an unprecedented scale and carried out we believe by one individual who was a regular visitor to the institutions he stole from.
“Thanks to the highly detailed and painstaking work of NRS archivists, we have been able to restore these records to their original collections and ensure they are available for study once again.”
