Odger's English Common Law

Chapter II.
EMBEZZLEMENT, &C.
The crime of embezzlement is closely analogous to larceny.
It is committed where a clerk or servant unlawfully appro-
priates to his own use money or goods received by him for or
on account of his employer or master. The exact language
of the statute 1
is as follows :— " Every person who, being a
clerk or servant, or person employed in the capacity of a
clerk or servant, fraudulently embezzles the whole or any
part of any chattel, money or valuable security, delivered to
or received or taken into possession by him for or in the
name or on the account of his master or employer, shall be
guilty of felony, and on conviction thereof liable to penal
servitude for any term not exceeding fourteen years." Boys
under sixteen years of age may be once privately whipped
in addition to any other punishment which the Court may
award. Embezzlement is an offence distinct from larceny,
from which it differs in two important particulars :
(i.) The crime of embezzlement can only be committed by
"a clerk or servant" or by one who is "employed in the
capacity of a clerk or servant," whereas any one can be
guilty of larceny.
(ii.) The prisoner must take possession of the property
and convert it to his own use before it comes into the posses-
sion of the prosecutor. If the property has come into the
possession, actual or constructive, of the prosecutor before
the prisoner converts it to his own use, the offence is not
embezzlement but larceny by a clerk or servant.
(i.) The first essential, then, is that the prisoner must be
the " clerk or servant," or a person " employed in the capacity
of a clerk or servant," of the person whose goods he embezzles.
i 6 & 7 Geo. V. c. 60, s. 17 (1). See indictment, No. 9, in the Appendix.
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