FINDING AND KEEPING

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXXII, Issue 61, 9 May 1924, Page 2

FINDING AND KEEPING

A lady who picked up a £5 note In the public part of a shop the other day handed it over to the police. She asked me whether she would have incurred any legal penalties f she had kept it (writes a BarHster in a London paper). If she had taken and kept it knowing who the owner was, or believing that the owner could be found by taking reasonable steps, she would have been guilty of the crime of larceny—an offence sometimes known as stealing by finding. Otherwise she might have kept it until it was claimed by the true owner, when she would be liable to a civil action for its recovery. As finder she had a better title to it than anyone else.

But supposing tho true owner was other who without knowledge picked discovered next day and she refused to deliver up to him? This was the case of a man who found banknotes on a public road, nqt knowing at the time who the owner was; and tho up a solvereign dropped by a lady who had passed that way the night before.

Seven eminent judges decided tho point—they found that as the original taking was not wrongful, the prisoner’s subsequent behavour could not make it amount to a crime.

On the other hand, if my tailor finds money in the pocket s or lining of the coat I have sent him and keeps tho money for himself, this is criminal; for he knows to whom the money belongs and connot suppose I meant to abandon good cash. 7t would he otherwise if ho treated it as payment on account. ■Similarly, to keep the valuable articles found in trains, taxicabs, or other conveyances may amount to theft

The finder of hidden treasure i s in the hardest case of all. Though 't lias lain buried in your own freehold garden for a thouand years it belongs not to you but to the crown. You are bound to report the find to the coroner; and he will hold an fjuquest oil it as if it were a dead body.

It is a crime to conceal it. A labourer found silver while digging a trench and kept it. He was convicted.

So was tli© ploughman who turned up a quantity of old gold in a field and sold it as old brass at Od a pound.

A more famous cause was that of another ploughman who unearthed golden treasure of great value and beauty in a field near Loch Foyle, in Ireland. It had been buried before the time of St. Patrick and consisted of gold chains, torques, collars, and a mode! boat of ancient Celtic workmanship.

Eventually this treasure was bought by the trustees of the British Museum, who in an action in the High Court in 1903 wore compelled to deliver it up to the Crown.