Odger's English Common Law

LARCENY BY FINDING. 353
And where the prisoner, who was employed in a tan-yard to dress
leather, was indicted for stealing skins, and the jury found that he took
them not with intent to sell or dispose of them, but with a view of bring-
ing them back to his master, and charging him as if they had been dressed
by himself, and so obtaining payment for dressing them, the Court held that
the prisoner could not be convicted of larceny, because there had been no
intent on his part to deprive the owner wholly of his property in the
leather. 1
So, too, if a servant takes a horse out of his master's stable, and turns it
out into the road, with intent to obtain a reward the next day by bringing
it back to his master, there would be no larceny.
Larceny by Finding.
The owner of a thing may deliberately throw it away with
the intention of abandoning his property in it ; and then
any one who finds it may lawfully take possession of it.
Again, a man may place a thing belonging to him in some
place where he thinks it will escape observation, meaning
shortly to return for it. Such an article still remains in his
possession, and no one has a right to touch it. We have to
deal under this heading with a third case. A man who is in
possession of a thing may accidentally drop it, or in some
other way unconsciously part with all control over it without
the least intention of abandoning whatever property he has in
it. In ordinary English, he cannot be said to be still in
possession of it ; he does not know where it is, or even that
he has lost it. But, as against any wrongdoer, the law deems
him still to be in possession of such lost property ; and such
constructive possession will continue until some other person
takes actual possession of it.
Where one person finds in some place open to the public
and appropriates to his own use the goods of another, such
appropriation will amount to larceny, if the finder then
"reasonably believes that the owner can be found," and yet
takes the goods with the deliberate intention of keeping them
for himself. 2
In deciding whether the accused had reasonable
belief that the owner could be found, the jury will be mainly
1 R. v. Holloway (1848)', 1 Den. C. C. 370 ; of. R. v. Poole (1857), Dearsl. & B. 345.
! R. v. Thurborn (1849), 1 Den. 0. C. 387, 394, 396 ; and sea the judgment o£
Stephen, J., in R. v. As/iwetl (1886), 16 Q. B. D. at p. 215, and Larceny Act, 1916,
s. 1 (2) (1) (d), ante, p. 347.
B.C.L. 23