The exploits of a thieving kleptomaniac V&A museum worker from Chiswick have been revealed in newly-released police files stored at the National Archives in Kew.
The heist rocked the museum world to its core as more than 2,068 priceless pieces of art were systematically stolen from the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington over a 20 year period - some of which have never been recovered.
Full details of the crimes, carried out between 1944 and 1953, can be revealed for the first time after confidential police files stored at the National Archives in Kew were released.
John Nevin, a trusted curator at the V&A, snuck thousands of items out of the museum of decorative arts to transform his three-bedroom home into a treasure trove.
When a routine stocktake in 1953 revealed the extent of the theft, police raided his address in Nightingale Close.
They discovered his bathroom curtains has been made from a length of rare and valuable cloth and his wife had been using a 19th-Century Italian leather and tortoiseshell handbag to carry her shopping in.
Nevin, who was 57 at the time of his arrest, smuggled his haul from the museum after being granted unique access to display cases after the Second World War.
He even managed to smuggle out a small table by dismantling it and carrying it out of the museum bit by bit in his trouser leg.
In Nevin's home, which he shared with his wife Mary, police found a gilt figure of a knight hidden behind a hot water tank, musical instruments in floor joists, a silver ink pot hidden in a chimney and several jade figurines in a vacuum cleaner dust bag.
His entire haul included 20 Japanese silver sword guards, 229 illustrations torn from books, 18 pieces of Albanian embroidery, 132 original drawings and watercolours and a 300-year-old Flemish tapestry.
In a statement summing up the case, investigating officers remarked: "Practically everything in Nevin's small three-bedroomed council house, with the exception of the bed linen and items of clothing, was found to be property stolen from the museum, so that at the end of the search the rooms were practically bare."
The documents reveal the couple initially denied stealing the goods, but eventually broke down as police revealed more and more missing objects hidden in their home.
Mrs Nevin, who pleaded guilty to 10 charges of receiving stolen goods, said at the time: "I am glad it is really over. I have been worried for years. We stopped asking people in because they used to say how expensive the things were."
Shortly after his arrest Nevin made an "ineffectual gesture at suicide" by drinking half a glass of cough mixture.
He was sentenced to three years in prison at West London Magistrates' court in June 1954.
In an attempt to explain his motivation for the crime, Nevin said: "I couldn't help myself. I was attracted by the beauty."
