A dragon’s hoard

That belongs in a museum!

This week I was all set to share one part of my editing process - it's been progressing surprisingly well this week. But then, as I do, I got distracted by a genuine old fashioned heist. Well… perhaps heist isn't the correct word here, but certainly gold and precious stones have been stolen from a museum. The British Museum, to be precise.

Photo by Tamara Menzi on Unsplash

Yes that's right, the British Museum has been all over the news this week because of stolen property. No, not the Parthenon Marbles. This time the stolen property is from their own stores. (It's a good thing that they've protected other people's property from the danger of being in one of those provincial museums that can't guarantee the safety of the artefacts, isn't it?)

Over the course of thirty years one of its staff members has allegedly stolen a veritable mountain of valuables from the archives. So no creeping round in the dead of night, disabling alarms and knocking out security guards. Just someone with permission to walk straight in, presumably walking out with something dropped in a pocket to be sold on later. After all, curators are likely to have the contacts.

What an unusual case, I hear you cry. Well, not really. The FBI estimates that around 90% of thefts from museums are inside jobs. That's not a typo. Ninety percent. The people who we trust most to look after cultural heritage are also those with the opportunity to steal it. Of course, most people won't take that opportunity. Most. 

A lot of museums don't have any way of keeping track of their items. Some don't even have the resources to catalogue what they have in their archives. And with hundreds of thousands of items, it's not so easy to stock check on a weekly basis. So even with the best security systems in the world, it simply isn't feasible to check every item every minute of the day. And you have to trust your employees.

That's not to say that insider thefts are inevitable, just far more probable than the heists we picture when we think about museum thefts. They mostly come to light only when a particular known item is being sought for an exhibition. And without significantly more funding heading into museums, we will continue to lose the world's physical heritage to illicit markets every year. 

It makes me wonder whether a museum curator would be the best job imaginable for a dragon. Just think, instead of all those traditionally vicious ways of stealing gold for their hoard, a dragon could waltz out with a small mountain of gold under its wings each evening and return home to have a comfortable night sleeping on their ever growing pile of treasure!

Once I've finished the current round of edits for A Quartz Storm - and sorry beta readers, it'll be a few more weeks because of upcoming childcare chaos - I'm going to be starting work on the first of the Amelia Ampersand fantasy mysteries. Think Jessica Fletcher or Miss Marple, but with magic. And who knows, maybe one of the stories could feature a museum dragon…