The National Records of Scotland employee who stole thousands of documents

Professor David Stirling Macmillan worked as an archivist at National Records of Scotland

Thousands of documents stolen from the archives of National Records of Scotland (NRS) by a former employee have been returned following an “unprecedented” investigation that lasted three decades.

At least 3,300 documents are believed to have been stolen by Scottish university professor David Stirling Macmillan, who worked for the Scottish Record Office in Edinburgh between 1949 and 1950.

Work by NRS archivists, headed by Dr Alan Borthwick, led them to conclude Prof Macmillan had taken the items between 1949 and 1980, when he was caught removing a single item from an NRS building, resulting in his access being revoked.

However, while some items in the collection, like letters by Robert Burns and Mary, Queen of Scots, were high profile, potentially valuable documents, it is believed Prof Macmillan was attracted to more mundane documents due to his life-long interest in stamps and postmarks.

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Of the 3,100 items returned, around 2,000 were stolen from the NRS archives. Meanwhile, 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.

David Stirling Macmillan. | NRS

After leaving Scotland, Prof Macmillan worked at the University of Sydney from 1954 to 1968. He left Australia in 1968 to go to Trent University in Peterborough in Ontario, Canada, where he taught history from 1968 until his death in 1987.

A number of items were recovered through a private sale in 1994 following the deaths of Prof Macmillan and his wife. However, the full scale of the thefts became apparent in 2012, when a researcher saw a reference in an online catalogue at Trent University in Canada to an item that he thought may have belonged in Scotland. Subsequent research by NRS archivists, working with colleagues in Trent, uncovered around 2,900 items stolen by Prof Macmillan.

These documents had been gifted to Trent University Archives after the professor’s death.

Dr Alan Borthwick led the investigation into the stolen items. | NRS

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 more items to the archives, as well as carrying out a detailed audit of the collections held by NRS, which were accessed by Prof Macmillan.

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 pain-staking 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.”

NRS

Ms Byrne added: “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."

NRS has also been engaging with owners of around 500 items whose privately deposited collections were impacted by the theft. A further 100 items are as yet of unknown origin.

In an audit of deposited collections accessed by Prof Macmillan, a further 200 items were found to be missing. NRS archivist experts conclude the professor is also likely to be responsible for their loss.

However, archivist opinion is the historical integrity of none of the collections has been significantly compromised.

John Chambers, chief executive of Archives and Records Association UK and Ireland, said: “We are pleased to see that international co-operation between archivists and archives has brought these records home. When these thefts began in 1949, the profession was in its infancy.

“Improvements in processes and security have been many since then and it is good to see the detailed work by NRS over many years that has led to a successful outcome.”