An Australian man named Ross Simmons was renovating his home in the seaside town of Kiama, south of Sydney, when he found something unexpected inside a sealed fireplace. Bricked into the wall was a tea crate. Inside the tea crate was a book.
The book was "Antiquities of Athens," published in 1858. It belonged to the Kiama Public Library. And it had been missing for approximately 150 years.
Simmons returned the book to the library last week. He believes it was originally borrowed by his great-great-grandfather John Simmons, who had owned the house where it was found.
The Kiama Library opened in 1872, and the book was marked as No. 506 in the library's original collection of around 1,000 books. Library manager Michelle Hudson suspects the book was lost within a few years of the library opening. The exact borrowing date is lost to time because the library's records from the 1870s no longer exist.
"We've never had anything that old come back to us," Hudson told the Associated Press. "I follow lots of libraries on social media and often you'll get things that are maybe 30 or 40 years old when they're cleaning out estates and stuff like that."
The overdue fine, calculated on the British three pence-a-week rate printed on the inside cover, comes to around 28,000 Australian dollars, roughly USD 19,500, adjusted for inflation. The library has since abolished all overdue fines, so the debt was waived.
The rules printed in the book offer a glimpse into library culture in the 1870s. Up to three books could be borrowed by households in which at least six members were "known to be able to read." Proof of reading ability is no longer required. Another rule stated that books were not lent to people who arrived at the library in a "state of intoxication." Current library policy simply asks disruptive patrons to leave, without specifying the type of disruption.
Hudson speculated that the original borrower may have avoided returning the book because the late fees were already too high. "Library rules in the 1870s stated that a book had to be returned and an overdue debt paid before another book could be borrowed. Maybe that's why they never returned it to us."
The book, which has some water damage from its years under a fireplace, will not go back into circulation. It will instead be displayed in the library's collection of significant items.
My Opinion
This is one of those stories that is impossible not to love. Someone borrowed a book in the 1870s, could not face the late fee, and apparently decided the best solution was to brick it into a wall and never speak of it again. That is commitment. The fact that it took 150 years and a renovation project to uncover the evidence is peak human behaviour. We have all avoided returning something because we felt guilty about how long we had it. This person just took it to the logical extreme.
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