Greater than 600 gadgets from a set documenting the hyperlinks between Britain and international locations within the former British Empire had been stolen from a U.Okay. museum in September, police mentioned Thursday.
Avon and Somerset police have launched an enchantment for details about 4 males captured on CCTV pictures on September 25 exterior a constructing within the southwestern metropolis of Bristol which housed gadgets from the gathering.
“Greater than 600 artefacts of varied descriptions had been taken by the offenders,” police mentioned in a assertion in regards to the theft from the British Empire and Commonwealth Assortment.
“The theft of many gadgets which carry a major cultural worth is a major loss for the town,” mentioned the officer within the case, Dan Burgan. “These things, lots of which had been donations, type a part of a set that gives perception right into a multi-layered a part of British historical past.”
Police mentioned they wished to speak to 4 unidentified males, all sporting caps or hoodies, seen within the CCTV pictures carrying luggage within the early hours. Authorities launched a number of CCTV pictures, exhibiting grainy pictures of the boys.
Police mentioned one man was had a stocky construct and was sporting a white cap; the second man had a slim construct and was sporting a grey-hooded jacket; the third man was sporting a inexperienced cap and appeared to stroll with a slight limp in his proper leg; and the fourth man was sporting a two-toned orange and navy/black puffed jacket.
Police mentioned the housebreaking occurred between 1:00am and a pair of:00am on September 25 within the metropolis’s Cumberland Street space.
In line with the gathering’s web site, the “distinctive assortment paperwork the hyperlinks between Britain and international locations within the British Empire from the late nineteenth century to latest occasions”.
It incorporates numerous objects, lots of them from the Pacific islands and clothes from African nations.
There are additionally pictures, movies, private papers in addition to sound recordings to offer “insights into numerous lives and landscapes throughout a difficult and controversial interval of historical past,” the web site provides.
The gathering had been transferred from the previous British Empire & Commonwealth Museum in Bristol when it closed in 2012.
It remained within the care of the town council, in addition to Bristol Museums, which encompasses 5 completely different establishments, and the town’s archives.
The revelation comes after thieves stole crown jewels from the Louvre, in Paris, in October.
And final month, dozens of historic gold cash had been stolen when a Swiss museum after a guard was overpowered by thieves, police mentioned.
In August 2023 the British Museum in London revealed that some 1,800 gadgets had been taken from its world-renowned collections by a former worker. Gadgets together with “gold jewellery and gems of semi-precious stones and glass courting from the fifteenth century BC to the nineteenth century AD,” had been discovered to be “lacking, stolen or broken,” the museum advised CBS Information on the time.
A couple of hundred had been later recovered.
The museum’s director Hartwig Fischer resigned in August 2023 after admitting the establishment didn’t act “because it ought to have” on warnings that gadgets had gone lacking.
