A former British Museum staff member stole over 300 pieces of art, selling them at an antiques market, before being caught red-handed, a new book has revealed.
Nigel Peverett, who worked at the museum’s Department of Prints and Drawings in the early 1970s, had remained a “frequent visitor” to the museum until one day in April 1992, when he was caught leaving it with 35 prints worth around £5,000.
When police, following up on the attempted theft, searched Peverett’s cottage in Kent, they discovered 169 more prints, worth an estimated £27,000. Peverett then admitted stealing a further 150 prints, which he had already sold.
Peverett had taken the antique artworks – sometimes going into the British Museum with one bag and “coming out with four” – and using a razor, had scraped off the museum catalogue numbers, or cut them down in size, before selling them through a dealer who sold them at his stall at Portobello Road antiques market.
The story of the thefts is recounted in Barnaby Phillips’ forthcoming book,The African Kingdom of Gold – about stolen treasure – and states that Peverett’s thefts were recorded by the museum after they came to light, and an effort was made to recover the stolen artworks.
By November 1992, the British Museum had recovered 55 stolen prints, but many were sold for cash to unknown buyers, so at least 95 are believed to still be outstanding.
Peverett died in 2023. In the book, Phillips recounts meeting Peverett’s family in Kent, who painted a picture of a “charming but feckless” man, who loved art and classical music, but was “totally irresponsible and hopeless with money”, even once burning a Porsche in an insurance fraud scheme.
Amazingly, Peverett’s family claimed he was allowed to keep his British Museum pension.
Peverett was prosecuted at the time, suffered a nervous breakdown and then tried to take his own life. He remained in a psychiatric hospital for six weeks, and received a suspended sentence.
In an email to The Independent, a spokesperson for the British Museum said: “These events occurred decades ago, and the individual was caught and prosecuted at the time.
“Thefts will unfortunately always be a risk for every museum, and for this reason, we take safeguarding the collection incredibly seriously. Alongside security measures, making the collection more widely known is another way we feel makes it safer and in 2023, we committed to have it fully digitised within five years.”
Barnaby Phillips’ bookThe African Kingdom of Gold: Britain and the Asante Treasure is published by Oneworld on Thursday, 5 March.
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