00:03Woolwich Crown Court heard on Thursday that 70-year-old Melvin West from Chingford had done a recce of the
00:10museum library before he used a Stanley knife to slice one of the 12 maps out of an atlas printed
00:16in 1684 by Dutch cartographer Frederik de Riet.
00:21The map, which has still not been found despite an earlier court hearing being adjourned so West could recover from
00:28heart surgery and return the item, was a celebrated example of a double hemisphere world map called Nova Orbis Tabula.
00:36Prosecution counsel Damien Warburton told the courts the completed atlas was valued at around £50,000, with the stolen map
00:45worth £6,000 alone on the black market.
00:48The courts heard the value of the atlas had been reduced to £20,000 due to the missing page, but
00:55Mr Warburton said the cultural loss far outweighs that of the financial.
01:00Police were called to the Kurd Library at around 3pm on the 26th of February last year after staff found
01:09a knife on the floor of the viewing room where West had earlier been looking at the atlas.
01:16It was then discovered that one of the maps was missing and had been removed with quote-unquote the slash
01:25of a blade.
01:26So that's neat.
01:29So that's neat.
