Section I. At Common Law and by Statute

At common law the receiving of stolen goods with knowledge that they had been stolen was a misdemeanour. It was necessary that a larceny of the goods should have been committed; yet the receiver was not indictable at common law as an accessory after the fact to this larceny (unless the receiving in some way assisted the thief's escape from justice), because it was not the thief, but only the goods, that he received. Subsequently, however, by various statutes (whose provisions are now comprised in the Larceny Act, 1916, s. 33 (1)), the scope of the offence was greatly widened, by extending it to cases where the original act of dishonesty was a stealing or obtaining of the property ‘in any way whatsoever under circumstances which amounted to felony or misdemeanour’. As to receiving the proceeds of a won-indictable theft, see the Act of 1861, post, 363.

The offence thus consists in ‘receiving stolen goods, knowing them to have been stolen’. This involves three points for consideration:

(a) the receiving, (b) the thing received, (c) the guilty knowledge.

(a) The receiving

There must have been some act of ‘receiving’, which involves a change of possession. It must therefore be shown that the prisoner took the goods into his possession, actual or constructive. This cannot be the case so long as the original thief retains exclusive possession of them (though there may well be an amicable joint possession by a receiver and a thief together). But, as in all cases of possession, a person may ‘ receive’ without himself taking part in any physical act of receipt. Accordingly if stolen goods are delivered to the prisoner's servant, or wife, in his absence, but he afterwards does some act that implies an acceptance of the goods—as by removing them to some other part of his premises, or by striking a bargain about them with the thief—he will then (though not till then) become himself a ‘receiver’ of them.