Forbes Smiley in Court Tomorrow

Forbes Smiley has been a bad, bad little man. He cut up atlases and other books in the Yale University library, absconded with the purloined plates, and sold the items to the highest bidder. He's due in court tomorrow, where he is expected to admit guilt. The quote below is from a recent Hartford Courant editorial; thanks to the endlessly updated and always interesting Map Room for bringing it to our attention:

To cultural guardians, this is no less serious an affront than desecration of a church … When it comes to crimes against property, this is about as low as one can go. Monetary value is beside the point. It’s one thing to steal mere objects out of greed, but quite another to pilfer irreplaceable treasures, hugely important to the study of history, that belong not to one victim, but to civilization.

I'm certain that this is not an isolated situation, and I imagine a pretty large proportion of the antique maps sold on Ebay, for example, have been removed from books not in the seller's possession and in less than kosher circumstances. At least one good thing is coming out of this: the Smiley case is generating a lot of much-needed dialogue.

Comments

[David Chaplin-Loebell]

There's a great book about this trend of map theft-- The Island of Lost Maps by Miles Harvey.