THE British Libray reacted angrily last night after a renowned American antique dealer who stole historic maps was jailed for 3½ years and ordered to pay £1 million compensation.

Clive Field, the library’s scholarship and collections director, said it was extremely disappointed by the leniency of the sentence imposed on Edward Forbes Smiley III by a court in New Haven, Connecticut.

Smiley, from Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, stole almost 100 maps from various collections, including a world map worth £53,000 from the British Library. He cut pages from historic books with a razor blade and sold them on to private dealers or collectors.

Despite his conviction, the library expressed anger last night at the court’s sentencing.

Dr Field said: “In the library’s view, a term of imprisonment of 42 months — equivalent to around 12 days for each of the 98 maps Smiley admitted to stealing — and financial restitution of £1 million, do not adequately reflect the seriousness of the offences.

“Nor do they represent a commensurate punishment of Smiley for his serial thefts, or a serious deterrent to other would-be thieves of cultural property.” He added: “It will go down in criminal and library history as one of the largest, most prolonged, premeditated and systematic of all thefts from libraries, and with no mitigating circumstances.”

The British Library map was by the German mathematician and cartographer Peter Apian, and was cut from a book once owned by Thomas Cranmer, an Archbishop of Canterbury.

The library said that the volume and the 1520 map had survived catastrophic events, including the execution of its owner in 1556, the English Civil War and the Nazi bombing of London.

The library believed that Smiley stole three other maps from its collection, a claim he has denied.

He was arrested last year after a librarian at Yale University found a razor blade on the floor of the room where he was looking at rare books.

When police confronted him they found seven maps worth nearly £500,000 hidden in his briefcase and pockets. His arrest sparked a global FBI investigation that saw agents e-mail the world’s top map curators, asking them to check for gaps in their collections.

In June he pleaded guilty to a charge of theft of artworks, admitting having stolen 96 maps from seven institutions. Since then, he has admitted two more thefts, bringing the total to 98. Most, including the British Library map, have been recovered.

The 50-year-old’s six other victims included the Boston and New York public libraries and the Harvard and Yale university libraries.

Prosecutors said that he acted out of resentment towards the prestigious institutions that became his victims and to pay for his expensive tastes and mounting debts.

Smiley was scheduled to report to prison in January. He told the court: “I am deeply ashamed of having done that. I cannot imagine the pain and the anger that I made them suffer. I have hurt many people.

“I stole very valuable research materials from institutions that made it their business to provide those materials to the public for valuable research.” He said that he wanted to pay the restitution as quickly as possible.

Dr Field said that Smiley’s crimes had damaged staff morale, harmed scholars who need the documents, and shattered the essential trust between libraries and their patrons. “Confidence has been compromised,” he added.

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