Thousands of Items Stolen by Stamp Expert Returned to Scottish Archive

National Records of Scotland (NRS) has completed the return of thousands of documents that were stolen from its archives and from other UK institutions by a single individual between 1949 and 1980.

NRS recovered around 3,100 items, mainly family, estate and business correspondence, that its archivists believe were stolen by one individual, Professor David Macmillan (1925-1987). The thefts appear to have been motivated by his interest in stamps and postmarks. Most of these documents were found in Canada after his death.

Of the 3,100 items returned, around 2000 were stolen from the NRS archives. These were owned by NRS, deposited by their owners or held by NRS on loan from another institution. Around 500 of the documents had been stolen directly from other institutions across the UK including The National Archives, the University of Aberdeen, Glasgow City Archives, the University of Glasgow, the University of Edinburgh and the National Library of Scotland.  Around 500 items were found to belong to collections held by private owners. A further 100 items are as yet of unknown origin. 

"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," said Alison Byrne, Chief Executive of NRS. "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. We have also been working closely with the other institutions affected by these thefts to ensure their items are also returned to their rightful collections."

Work by NRS archivists led them to conclude that Professor Macmillan had stolen the items between 1949 and 1980 when he was caught taking a single item in an NRS building and his access was immediately revoked. A number of items were recovered through a private sale in 1994 following the deaths of Macmillan and his wife, however, the full scale of the thefts became apparent in 2012.

A researcher saw a reference in an online catalogue at Trent University in Canada to an item which he thought may have belonged in Scotland and raised concerns with NRS. Subsequent research by NRS archivists, working with colleagues in Trent, uncovered around 2900 items which had been stolen by Macmillan

These documents had been gifted to Trent University Archives after Macmillan’s death. Through collaboration between NRS and Trent University, the documents were successfully repatriated to Scotland in 2015. Since then, NRS archivists have been working to return the thousands of items to the archives, as well as carrying out an extremely detailed audit of the collections held by NRS which were accessed by Macmillan.

NRS has also been engaging with owners whose privately deposited collections were impacted by the theft. In an audit of deposited collections accessed by Macmillan a further 200 items were found to be missing and NRS archivist experts conclude he is likely responsible for their loss. This means it is believed he stole at least 3,330 individual items. Archivist opinion is that the historical integrity of none of the collections has been significantly compromised.

Although he was not convicted of the offences, NRS is confident Professor Macmillan did carry out the thefts given the documents that were recovered that he was known to have accessed and the detailed collection audit that archivists have undertaken.