A remarkable criminal case was once tried before Baron Parke, in which his ruling and sentence were at the time considered extremely hard and severe; upon re-argument before the fifteen judges in London his law was held to be sound, and has remained as a text in succeeding cases.
The prisoner purchased at an auction an old bureau, and finding it rather too long for a recess in which he wished to fit it, got a carpenter to cut off a portion of the moulding at one end. While this was doing, a secret drawer flew open and disclosed one hundred guineas, which had been hidden there; the carpenter claimed half, as the finder of the coin; this was refused, and a single guinea given him, the purchaser taking the rest of the money and appropriating it to his own use. The carpenter blazed abroad the story, the heir-at-law of the deceased owner of the bureau claimed the money, and being refused, gave the purchaser into custody for stealing his property.
The case was tried at the Liverpool Assizes before Baron Parke, who told the jury that the prisoner only bought the bureau, and that that only was intended to be sold, that the money was still legally in the custody of the man who placed it there, or of his heirs-at-law, and that if they believed the fact that the prisoner took the money from the bureau, and spent it, that was larceny in the eye of the law. The jury had no alternative but to find a verdict of guilty, and the judge sentenced the prisoner to three months imprisonment with hard labour.
Recollections of Baron Parke
The Leisure Hour – (London) 1879
– Jeff Burks
Clearly the Hon. Mr. Parke was unfamiliar with the landmark decision of Finders-Keepers v. Losers-Weepers.
Sometimes silence is guinea, I mean golden.
Neat article,
These days, the original carpenter needs to be careful.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/03/alfred-anaya/all/
See, even back then the legal system was broken!
Another nice find, Jeff.
This reminds me of an 1884 contracts case from law school between Michigan banker Theodore Sherwood and Hiram Walker, maker of Canadian Club whiskey. Sherwood bought from Walker a cow, “Rose 2d of Aberlone,” that both believed to be barren. When Sherwood arrived to take the cow to be weighed at the slaughterhouse to determine her exact price as beef, Walker’s farmhand realized she was with calf and refused to hand her over. Sherwood thought he was entitled to reap the benefits of this new-found fecundity, so he sued Walker for the animal. Walker, however, won on appeal. The Court found that both parties were mistaken as to the nature of the thing they had bargained over thus proving to old Rose what the bull must have whispered into her ear before she finally gave him the chance: “You’ll never be the same again.”