Weird Facts I Learned from Books: The Feather Thief

A Feather Thief?  

Some one stole thousands of dollars worth of taxidermy birds from the British Natural History Museum? The answer to the question is yes. His name is Edwin Rist and he was a concert flautist and a Victorian salmon fly-tying enthusiast.

The birds he stole would create the most accurate flies seen in the modern era. Rist packed the birds into a suitcase after he snuck in through a window if the museum annex in Tring. He would later sell the flies to other aficionados who regarded tying them and collecting them as an art form. The flies can contain up to a dozen feathers from different birds around the world, some of them extinct since the late Victorian era.

The book The Feather Thief by Kirk Wallace Johnson delves into this history of this strange world and the very modern crime which sparked Johnson’s interest. A fly fisher himself, he found the crime fascinating and takes his readers on a bizarre journey through the art form of fly tying and the collectors who want the rarest of the rare original flies. This is a must read for anyone who loves bizarre and true crimes.