Over 2,000 Scottish historical letters were stolen. They were found in Canada

After three a long time, hundreds of historic paperwork have been returned to their rightful house on the Nationwide Information of Scotland. 

Alan Borthwick, an archivist on the Nationwide Information of Scotland who performed a key function in bringing them again, expressed a “sense of satisfaction” as they’re now prepared for use by a brand new era of historians. 

The misplaced letters, which had been returned on March 25, embrace household, property and enterprise correspondence, some relationship all the way in which again to the 1600s.

And to Borthwick’s shock, that they had been taken.

How they went lacking

The Nationwide Information of Scotland is tasked with preserving and sustaining the nation’s public information, guaranteeing that they are accessible for analysis, schooling and authorized functions. 

However in 1994, an unsettling discovery was made. 

A complete of 200 gadgets from their assortment surfaced at an public sale in London. It prompted an investigation, and Borthwick from the Nationwide Information of Scotland was tasked to crack the case. 

“My colleague … was astonished to see a whole lot of letters which most likely got here from collections which we held in our workplace, so we had been capable of get better the lot,” Borthwick advised As It Occurs host Nil Köksal.

“When it was introduced again to our workplace in Edinburgh, I used to be requested if I may take a look by way of.”

As Borthwick sifted by way of the gadgets, he matched their reference numbers to their mum or dad assortment and was astounded — the gadgets had been stolen from the Nationwide Information of Scotland.

“That was when alarm bells actually started to ring,” mentioned Borthwick. 

However it wasn’t tough to establish the alleged wrongdoer — although whoever had taken the paperwork had gone to nice lengths to cowl up their theft by eradicating reference numbers and changing gadgets with forgeries. 

Via cross-referencing with the nationwide archive’s file of customers that date all the way in which again to 1847, Borthwick zeroed in on one man: David Stirling Macmillan. 

Born in 1925 in Scotland, Macmillan had labored on the archive for only a yr beginning in 1949, although he continued to have entry to the archive lengthy after. 

That entry was revoked in 1980 after he was caught eradicating a doc from the archive. 

On the time, the workers believed it was an remoted incident. However as Borthwick would later uncover, the size, he’d ultimately come to comprehend, was far larger. 

The plot thickens 

Over a decade later in 2012, Borthwick was contacted by a researcher who had seen a reference in a web based catalogue at Trent College in Peterborough, Ont., to an merchandise that appeared to have Scottish origins. 

Upon visiting Trent College, Borthwick mentioned he was shocked. Round 2,000 gadgets that had been allegedly stolen by Macmillan from the Nationwide Information of Scotland and had been being housed in Canada. 

In reality, there have been 3,100 stolen gadgets discovered. Amongst them, round 500 paperwork had been stolen from different establishments throughout the U.Okay. Round 500 gadgets belong to collections held by non-public house owners and 100 gadgets have an unknown origin. 

It seems that Macmillan, who had moved to Canada in 1968, had taught historical past on the college for 20 years. He died in 1987, and the paperwork got to the college. 

Borthwick says the now-retired archivist on the college was “totally astonished.” 

“They could not have imagined that. There is not any purpose for them to think about that … these paperwork that professor Macmillan bequeathed to the archives, may have been stolen,” mentioned Borthwick. 

Trying to find clues 

Although it is not potential to ask Macmillan, who was not charged with against the law, about his motive, Borthwick says that the gadgets themselves, a big cache of particular person letters, have clued him in. 

“We started to comprehend that more than likely, professor Macmillan’s abiding curiosity, was postal historical past, in different phrases, postmarks on letters,” mentioned Borthwick. 

The letters, largely correspondence between Scottish folks to these dwelling abroad, had been marked with distinctive and strange postmarks.

And Borthwick speculates that it might need been an harmless thought that led to the deed. 

“We predict, maybe, that professor Macmillan thought, ‘Oh, that is a very nice, attention-grabbing wanting postmark, I want I may have that in my assortment.'”