Odger's English Common Law

400 MALICIOUS INJURIES TO PROPERTY.
destroy or render useless certain goods, or the tools or
machinery used in manufacturing those goods. 1 The same
maximum sentence may be passed on any one who damages
or destroys any sea bank or wall, or any wall which retains
water in a river, canal, drain or reservoir, if such damage
causes any land or building to be in danger of being
a fortiori, if it be—overflowed or damaged by the escape
of the water. 2
Similarly destroying any work belonging to any dock, port,
harbour or reservoir, 3 destroying or rendering dangerous
in the use any bridge, viaduct or aqueduct/ placing
obstructions on a railway line, 5 masking or altering any light
or signal with intent to endanger any ship, 6 setting fire to
any mine of coal or other mineral fuel, 7 or riotously and
with force demolishing or beginning to demolish buildings,
machinery, mining plant, &c., 8 is felony punishable with penal
servitude for life.
To unlawfully and maliciously set fire to any crop of hay,
grass, corn, grain or cultivated vegetable produce, whether
standing or cut down, or to any part of any wood,
coppice or plantation, or to any heath, gorse, furze or fern, is
felony punishable with penal servitude for fourteen years. 9
But to unlawfully and maliciously set fire to any stack of
corn, grain, hay, straw or cultivated vegetable produce, or of
furze, gorse, heath, fern, peat, &c, is a felony punishable with
penal servitude for life. 10 Attempting to set fire to such crops
or stacks under circumstances, which would have constituted
the full offence had the attempt succeeded, is a felony punish-
1 24 & 25 Vict. o. 97, s. 14. Such goods are any " article of silk, woollen, linen,
cotton, hair," &c. ;
cesses of manufacture which apply to those goods.
2
S. 30.
9 S. 30.
4
S. 33.
5 S. 35 ; and see s. 36 and indictment, No. 17, in the Appendix,
e S. 47.
—
and the section protects all machinery used in the various pro-
1 S. 26 ; and see s. 27.
8 S. 11. If the rioters do not do more than merely injure such buildings, they are
guilty of a misdemeanour for which they can be sent to penal servitude for seven years :
fi. 12. But the fact that malicious damage to property is done by three or more
persons acting in concert will not of itself constitute them rioter's: Field v. .Rflceiver
of Metropolitan- Police, [1907] 2 K. B. 853, ante, p. 163.
9 S. 16.
10 S. 17.