Odger's English Common Law

Chapter VI.
BURGLARY AND HOUSEBREAKING.
The crime of burglary is now defined by section 25 of
the Larceny Act, 1916, as follows :
" Every person who in the night
—
(1) breaks and enters the dwelling-house of another with
intent to commit any felony therein ;
(2) breaks out of the dwelling-house of another, having
{a) entered the said dwelling-house with intent to com-
mit any felony therein ;
(b) committed any felony in the said dwelling-house
shall be guilty of felony called burglary and on conviction
thereof liable to penal servitude for life."
A Court of Quarter Sessions has jurisdiction to try any
one charged with this offence, although grave and difficult
cases should still be committed for trial to the Assizes. 1
The term " dwelling-house " has a somewhat restricted
meaning in the definition of burglary. It denotes a permanent
building in which the occupier or any member of his family
habitually sleeps at night. If the person who usually resides
in the dwelling-house is temporarily absent, and nobody is
sleeping there at all on the night of the burglary, it is still a
dwelling-house. , But the fact that a caretaker comes in at
night and sleeps in a warehouse for the purpose of taking care
of the goods in it will not make that warehouse a dwelling-
house. 2 A part of a house may be a dwelling-house, e.g., if
the building be so constructed as to consist of several parts,
which have no internal communication between each other,
and are occupied and habitually slept in by different tenants.
Thus a flat or a set of rooms in a college is a separate dwelling-
house. 3 A building standing within the curtilage of a
or
or
1 Larceny Act, 1916, s. 38.
a R. v. Flannagan (1810), R. & R. 187.
8 Fenn v. Grafton (1836), 2 Bing. N. C. 617.
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