There’s no such thing as finders keepers!
Woman is prosecuted for keeping a £20 note she found in local store
WHEN Nicole Bailey found a £20 note she applied the saying that everyone learns in childhood: ‘Finders keepers, losers weepers.’
But a court has dispelled any legal basis to the idiom after she appeared in the dock – charged with theft.
Magistrates decided the 23year-old committed theft when she picked up the cash from a display case in her local corner shop. The admin worker scooped up the note and put it in her wallet after popping into a One Stop shop near her home in Blurton, Stoke-On-Trent.
But a man later approached staff to report that he had lost the £20 note in the store.
North Staffordshire magistrates were told that Bailey was caught on CCTV picking up the money and she was recognised by the store manager as a regular customer.
The police were called and Bailey, who had no previous convictions, attended a voluntary interview. The secretarial administrator at a recruitment company at first denied taking the money, but changed her story when presented with the CCTV footage.
She admitted theft in court on Monday. Simon Dykes, defending, said the matter could have been settled with a caution when police first dealt with her last year.
He added: ‘She didn’t know who the money belonged to. People don’t realise picking up something you have found amounts to theft. She has been quite naïve in doing so.’
Bailey was given a six-month conditional discharge and ordered to pay £175 in court costs and charges.
She declined to comment when approached yesterday.
Chief Inspector Karen Stevenson of Staffordshire police urged the public to ‘do the right thing by taking all reasonable steps to try and find the owner’. John Spencer, professor of law at Cambridge, said the value of a find can be a factor. ‘If you pick up a £1 coin you can keep it unless you saw someone drop it, as you would not be able to find the owner by taking reasonable steps,’ he said.
‘But if you found four or five £20 notes in a gutter – as I once did – you probably will find the owner as they are likely to contact the police, as they did in my case.’
Online commenters expressed sympathy with Bailey last night. Melanie Stanley said: ‘Poor woman, she didn’t steal it.
‘I’m sure we have all found money in the past and put it in our pocket.’
Scott Hoford added: ‘Wow, really? The amount of money I’ve found and kept I’d be doing a life sentence.’ The principle of keeping finds has existed since Roman times when sec- ond century legal scholar Gaius suggested unowned property became the ‘property of the first taker’.
The modern epithet of finders keepers was first recorded in an 1825 British publication, Glossary of North Country Words, as: ‘Findee keepee, lossee seekee.’ An early variant, ‘findings keepings’, appeared in 1595.
‘People don’t realise it’s theft’