More than 1,700 items are missing from museums in England, including a Queen Victoria drawing and a prehistoric jaw fragment.
Freedom of information requests to museums receiving public funding asked for details on missing objects from the last 20 years (via BBC).
This came after the British Museum reported last year that around 2,000 items in its collection had been stolen or damaged.
London’s National Portrait Gallery has 45 “not located” items, including a 1869 drawing of Queen Victoria. The institution says the items are not missing or stolen.
More than 180 artefacts are missing from the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A). These include artworks and false moustaches.
Around 245 items are missing from Royal Museums Greenwich, including a cannonball. The group said “ghost entries, the result of data transfer from more primitive databases, incorrect documentation or human error in the past” could be to blame.
Among the Natural History Museum‘s lost items are a jaw fragment of a Late Triassic reptile, the Diphydontosaurus. This was found to have been lost during a loan in 2019. More than 180 fish were recorded as lost in 2020, and a crocodile tooth was found to be stolen in 2020.
As for the Science Museum Group, in 2014 it reported to police the theft of two model steam trains. Other items recorded as missing include a 1960s model of a deep-sea observation chamber.
Fish and false moustaches go missing
Several artefacts are lost from the Horniman Museum and Gardens and Royal Armouries collections, and more than 550 items were disclosed by the Imperial War Museums when asked about missing items.
In December, the British Museum announced the completion of an independent review of security, which produced a series of recommendations to protect the collection.
At the same time, the museum said the staff member accused of stealing or damaging around 2,000 artefacts is not cooperating with the search for them.
