British Museum staff member stole over 300 pieces of art before being caught red-handed

A former British Museum employee stole more than 300 works of art, sold them at an antiques market and was eventually caught red-handed, a new book has revealed.

Nigel Peverett, who worked in the museum’s Printmaking and Drawing Department in the early 1970s, remained a “frequent visitor” of the museum until one day in April 1992 when he was caught leaving the museum with 35 prints worth around £5,000.

When police followed up on the attempted burglary and searched Peverett’s cottage in Kent, they found a further 169 prints worth an estimated £27,000. Peverett later admitted stealing a further 150 prints he had already sold.

Peverett had taken antique works of art (sometimes he would enter the British Museum with one bag and “leave out with four bags”) and, using a razor, scratch off the museum catalog numbers or reduce their size, then sell them through an antiques dealer who sold them from his stall in the Portobello Road antiques market.

The story of the theft is told Barnaby Phillips’ upcoming book, African Golden Kingdom – regarding the stolen treasure – states that Peverett’s thefts were recorded by the museum after they were discovered and efforts were made to recover the stolen works of art.

By November 1992, the British Museum had recovered fifty-five stolen prints, but most were sold to unknown buyers for cash, so at least 95 are believed to still be outstanding.

Peverett died in 2023. In the book, Phillips describes meeting his family in Kent, which paints a picture of a “charming but incompetent” man who loved art and classical music, but was “completely irresponsible and hopeless with money”, even once burning a Porsche in an insurance fraud scheme.

Shockingly, Peverett’s family claimed that he was allowed to collect his British Museum pension.

At that time, a lawsuit was filed against Peverett, he had a nervous breakdown and later tried to take his own life. He remained in a psychiatric hospital for one and a half months and his sentence was suspended.

In an email IndependentA spokesman for the British Museum said: “These events occurred decades ago and the individual was captured and prosecuted at the time.

“Thefts will unfortunately always be a risk for any museum and that’s why we take the protection of the collection extremely seriously. Alongside security measures, we think making the collection more widely known is another way we think it will make it safer, and we’ve committed to making it fully digital within five years in 2023.”

Book by Barnaby Phillips African Golden Kingdom: Britain and the Asante Treasure It was published by Oneworld on Thursday, March 5th.

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