British Library restricts its child material
Institution forced to react after it finds pictures being ripped from works created by known paedophiles
‘Readers who steal from or seriously harm our collections will have their reader passes suspended’
THE British Library has restricted access to explicit material created by a paedophile after thieves stole photographs of young boys from books, The Daily Telegraph can reveal.
Naked children are depicted in photographic volumes held by the institution, some of which were compiled by admitted or convicted sex offenders.
Pages have been torn out of books with titles including Boys Will Be Boys and The Boy: A Photographic Essay.
The Daily Telegraph has obtained information on the thefts of material which encompasses the work of a German self-described “happy paedophile”.
The British Library has taken steps to restrict access to 11 targeted books ranging from explicit images to erotic novels, and they can now only be viewed with the permission of an invigilator.
Thefts of pages from purported art photography books have been recorded at the London institution, where readers can use but not borrow material.
Some targeted texts like Pan Still Lives were created by late German photographer Hans Joachim “Hajo” Ortil. He was open about his 800 sexual encounters with young boys and once described himself in an interview as “one of the few happy paedophiles”.
The Boy: A Photographic Essay and Boys Will Be Boys were compiled pseudonymously by Martin Swithinbank and Ronald Drew, both of whom were convicted of child sexual offences.
The British Library, which legally acquires copies of all works published in the UK, said steps had been taken to stop explicit images being stolen.
“Titles were re-categorised and can only be consulted at a specially invigilated desk” a spokesman said. “We take collection security very seriously.” The spokesman also explained that the books were held by the institution because it “has a statutory responsibility to preserve and provide access to UK publications, which are acquired predominantly through legal deposit”.
This system entails UK publishers providing a copy of each work to the publicly funded national library.
In the past five years, more than 400 pages have been reported missing from almost 40 different volumes within the library, which holds the world’s largest, spanning texts from the Magna Carta to William Shakespeare’s priceless folios.
The Daily Telegraph has learnt that many of the pages ripped from books at the library were from works featuring nude photographs of boys and adolescents. Since 2018, material has gone missing from Ortil’s Pan and Canoe Pirates, which feature naked children.
Other works that have been restricted include In The Land Of Naked Men, Jock Sturges’ pictures of adolescents, Fully Exposed: The Male Nude in Photography, and Coming Of Age.
In total, 11 works ranging from images of children to sexual novels about naked cavemen have been restricted by the British Library.
A spokesman said: “Every instance is thoroughly investigated and readers who steal from or seriously harm our collections will have their reader passes permanently suspended.
“Such instances are reported to the police and the Library will always press for a prosecution.”
The moves follow revelations last year that thieves were targeting texts. Among the hundreds of pages taken were sections of Christian sermons, historical works, and the first volume of Autocar. The British Library said that it audits its collections, and the number of lost items is vanishingly rare.