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A forum member private messaged me about this so I might as well put everything on record for those interested. In July 2025, I began to doubt the claim made by George Edmunds (Kidd: The Search For His Treasure, 1996) the original Kidd-Palmer maps were purchased by a man named Maurice Taylor on behalf of an American-Canadian syndicate in the late 1950s. Edmunds also claims (with no evidence) the maps are now somewhere in Canada. Edmunds and Gjb could not agree the year the maps were supposedly sold by Elizabeth Dick to Maurice Taylor: 1956 or 1957. Aside from this discrepancy, I came across newspaper sources that heavily contradicted and arguably disproved the maps were sold in either of those years (several are quoted in my thread: "What happened to the Kidd-Palmer treasure maps?"). One of Dick's relatives thought she instead sold the maps in 1964. I also looked into the shady background of Taylor. It turned out he had been involved in no fewer than six failed expeditions in a futile attempt to recover buried treasure using one of the Kidd-Palmer maps and a photographic copy as a guide (Dick gave him access). One of the expeditions was investigated for fraud, and another was cancelled over a dispute concerning fuel. No buried treasure of course was recovered. In 1952, with his relative Patrick Crowe, Taylor was trying to raise £20,000 by misleadingly promising investors he would lead them to Kidd's treasure. By 1958, he was trying to organise a sixth expedition. A dodgy character to say the least. This, and other reasons (I explain in other thread), made me conclude Taylor is an untrustworthy source and the maps were unlikely to have been sold to him.
If the maps were not sold in 1956 or 1957 to Taylor by Dick, when were they sold and to whom? One of Dick's relatives, her nephew (E. A. Furbear) thought she sold them in 1964 but I could not confirm this (see Eastbourne Gazette, 13 October 1965). In 1966, a story was published in another newspaper stating that an Eastbourne antique dealer named Eric Sheldon knew who Dick sold the maps to, but he did not state who this was, although he insinuated it was an "Englishman" (no year provided). The thread I created to discuss the whereabouts of the maps went stale by September 2025 (more recent comments in that thread have primarily been on different things). It was not until March 2026, I came across new information on the maps. I have waited until now from posting this here. I had been searching newspapers in archives to try to find an article post-1966 on the whereabouts of the four maps. After searching for many hours in digital archives, I managed to find what I was looking for. I can now reveal that one of the Kidd-Palmer maps was sold at an auction in Eastbourne in 1970. See: Irish Independent (23 November 1971), page 10:
We are told in the (1971) newspaper article that a faded map purported to show the location of Captain Kidd's treasure on an island was bought "last year" (1970) by a man named Malcolm Eggington, a 42-year-old who was at the time organising an expedition to an island in the Indian Ocean. The single map is said to have been bought by Eggington at an auction at a "town on England's south coast". This obviously suggests Eastbourne, the same place Elizabeth Dick in 1950 auctioned one of the Kidd-Palmer maps (but she withdrew it from sale since it did not meet the reserve price). She sold at auction other items from Hubert Palmer's collection. I then tried to find the journalist who published the article, Judson Bennett, to to inquire if the map was one of the original Kidd-Palmer maps, but I could not find any information about Bennett's whereabouts today and they are possibly dead. Bennett was a researcher and journalist who specialised in maps and published articles in numerous newspapers from approximately 1965 to 1988. If we assume he was 30 in 1965 (when he began his journalism career), he would be 91 today. Based on Bennett's articles including investigative journalism on maps, this was almost certainly not a hoax story; the article was reprinted in a few local British newspapers including Worcester News. However, national or more mainstream newspapers in Britain never picked and reported on the auction of the map nor was there a follow-up article. The digitised article is not available to read anywhere for free and it requires a subscription to an archive to access. The article was not easy to find, which explains why no one mentioned it in relation to the Kidd-Palmer maps before me.
Although I failed to make contact with Judson Bennett (I do not know if he is still alive), I managed to find a retired journalist who remembered the news story (they are now in their 80s) and they knew some stuff about the sale and the map. I have not yet asked for permission to name this individual, although this is something I could do in the future since I am in email contact. Anyway, the individual, who was a journalist in the 1970s remembers the sale was at an auction house in Eastbourne. Although they had minimal knowledge what was specifically on the map, aside from it depicted an island (disclosed by Eggington), they knew the map was "part of a set". Combined with the location of the auction and sale (Eastbourne), this is strong evidence the map was indeed one of the four original Kidd-Palmer maps. The probability of there being a different set of "Kidd maps" auctioned in Eastbourne is very low. The retired journalist himself is someone interested in the Kidd-Palmer maps. If you read the newspaper article it states that Mr. Eggington who purchased the map had put it in a "strong box" in a bank in London. That is all I found out. However, I made the mistake of communicating this information to a handful of other people and providing them with the newspaper article. In turn, those people communicated with others, and so on. I can presume this became like Chinese whispers. Someone got the wrong end of the stick to mistakenly believe that I came into possession of the maps or knew where they are now located myself, after I found the 1971 newspaper article (only the latter part is true). Of course, I never came across the maps but the distortion of what someone told someone as a half-truth led someone to try to burgle my house. As I noted in an earlier comment, the person who did this was also familiar with my thread "What happened to the Kidd-Palmer treasure maps?". That thread gained over 30,000 views.
Having discussed and learnt more about the maps from the ex-journalist I contacted, they told me after the incident that involved me that were many previous criminal incidents involving attempts to steal the Kidd-Palmer maps and actual theft of items in Hubert Palmer's possession, when he was alive and after his death (when Dick was selling items from his collection). One would think there would be newspaper reports to confirm these incidents. Turns out they exist and the ex-journalist is a reliable source of information. The ex-journalist told me that newspaper articles were published on these incidents between the 1950s and 1960s. I never dug them up before and only began looking into these in May-June 2026. To my knowledge, no one before me has posted these on the internet.
Evening Standard (July 19, 1950), page 3:
This is one of multiple incidents. When Dick was selling items from Palmer's collection at auction, someone on 18 July 1950, stole a small Victorian box. Dick auctioned these items at Palmer's house (she inherited) on 20 and 21 July 1950, but a few days earlier she had a public viewing before the auction. You could walk around the large house and inspect the items in different rooms. Since an item was stolen during the public viewing, the auction (held over two days) had a police presence. Unfortunately, I could not find a newspaper source to verify another incident the ex-journalist told me but I might as well mention it: when Palmer was alive he had briefly exhibited one of the chests the Kidd-Palmer maps came in to help raise money for a War Memorial Fund (see Eastbourne Gazette, 13 August 1947). Supposedly, someone had tried to steal the chest. Moving on a decade, there is more proof of theft of Palmer's possessions. After Palmer died, his book collection of Harold T. Wilkins books were given to his local library in Eastbourne. The books presumably included Palmer's written notes inside these books. The books included Hunting Hidden Treasures (1929), Treasure Hunting: The Treasure Hunter's Own Book of Land Caches and Bullion Wrecks (1932) and Pirate Treasure (1937).
Evening Argus (October 28 1966), page 15:
As you can read in the article, Palmer's collection of Wilkins' books were stolen from the library. Not only were these three books stolen but so were their reference library cards. I presume the books were primarily stolen for Palmer's written notes inside. The article states Hunting Hidden Treasures was written in the early 1920s but it was not published until 1929. There is no evidence Palmer had assisted Wilkins with Hunting Hidden Treasures (1929). This predates when they met and corresponded. However, it is possible that Palmer assisted Wilkins with Treasure Hunting (1932, 2nd ed. 1939) and Pirate Treasure (1937). This makes sense because the latter mentions Hubert Palmer multiple times and the second edition of Treasure Hunting mentions Palmer on a single page. Back to the current whereabouts of the Kidd-Palmer maps: someone can possibly use the above information to locate where they are today by trying to contact Judson Bennett. I doubt Malcom Eggington is still alive since he was born in 1929 (he would be nearly 100).
Update (correction): I confused Pirate Treasure (1937) with another of Wilkins' books - Modern Buried Treasure Hunters (1934). Pirate Treasure does not mention Palmer's name but Modern Buried Treasure Hunters does.
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