A 73-year-old man from Chingford has been jailed for three years for cutting a 350-year-old map out of an atlas at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. The map has still not been found.
Melvin West was sentenced at Woolwich Crown Court on Thursday 22 October. He had pleaded guilty to theft, criminal damage and possession of a bladed article.
The judge also gave him a ten-year criminal behaviour order. It bans him from being alone in the reading room of any museum or library in England and Wales.
What happened
Police were called at around 3pm on 26 February 2025. Staff in the museum's Caird Library had found a small knife on the floor under a desk. A member of the public, later identified as West, had used that desk earlier in the day.
Staff found that an atlas printed in 1684, which West had been looking at that morning, had been cut. One of its twelve maps was missing.
The missing page is a well-known example of a double hemisphere world map, Nova Orbis Tabula, by the 17th-century Dutch cartographer Frederick de Wit.
Detectives found that West had visited the library three times before. He had registered for a reader's card under the name Melville West. CCTV showed him using a small knife to remove the map from the book and hiding it in his clothing.
Detectives from the Met's art and antiques unit identified West, who has several convictions in Europe for stealing pages from valuable antique books. Officers got a search warrant and arrested him at his address on Old Church Road, Chingford, where he was then living, on 4 March 2025. In interview he answered "no comment" to most questions.
Appeal for the map
The Metropolitan Police says enquiries to find the map are continuing.
Detective Constable Sophie Hayes said: "We are appealing to anyone who has knowledge of the map's whereabouts to do the right thing and contact the Metropolitan Police so that it can be returned to the library. The Caird Library is an internationally important resource, used by scholars the world over. Thefts like this mean the only people who profit from these beautiful artefacts are the thieves themselves. This case demonstrates our determination to bring offenders to justice."
A Royal Museums Greenwich spokesperson said: "We are pleased the criminal case, on which we co-operated closely with the Metropolitan Police, has been brought to a close."
If you have information about where the map is, you can contact the Metropolitan Police.
