13. Burglary, housebreaking and blackmail

The homicide and larceny pages in this part of the lecture are already the chapters on homicide and on stealing. What follows is the rest of those notes: burglary, housebreaking, blackmail, and then the offences against the person and against the administration of justice.

Burglary

Section 25: Burglary is breaking and entering a dwelling-house in the night with intent to commit a felony. Section 46(1) fixes the night as the hours from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m.

Both parts in the night: If the accused breaks in and then enters, both the breaking and the entry must be in the night. They need not be the same night. A breaking in the day and an entry at night is not burglary. Breaking out is different. If he entered first and breaks out at night after a felony inside, the entry itself need not have been at night, and the felonious intent need not have existed at the moment of entry. R v Gardiner is the lecture's name for that last point. Use the section, not a holding the extract does not give.

A dwelling-house: It is a permanent structure where someone usually sleeps and which he treats as home. A tent or a movable caravan is not enough on these notes. Temporary absence does not end the character of the house if the occupier means to return. Outbuildings count if they are permanent and communicate with the house. Section 46(2) is the lecture's reference for a shop that communicates with the living part. The Sierra Leone chapter on larceny states the same section in one sentence. This is the working-out.

Breaking and entry

An open way is not a breaking: Walking through a door or window that is already open, or through a hole that was there already, is not a breaking. Opening a closed door or window is. Forcing a pane, or making a hole, is. A door that is only ajar is not a breaking if nothing fastened is moved. The lecture's phrase is the orthodox one.

Constructive breaking: Going down a chimney is a breaking. So is entry by fraud, such as a meter reader or a plumber who is let in for a job and then goes beyond it. The consent was to the job, not to the felony.

Entry: Some part of the body must go in. A hand through the broken window is an entry. A tool pushed through only to make the hole is a breaking and not yet an entry. A tool used to hook goods out is enough for an entry. State that distinction. Do not invent a report for every name in the lecture.

The intent: For a breaking in, the intent to commit a felony in the house must exist at the time of the breaking and entering, not afterwards.

Housebreaking

Section 26: Housebreaking is built on the same breaking and entering, with two differences. It can be by day or by night. It is not confined to a dwelling-house. The lecture asks whether an unoccupied house, a cinema or a dance hall can be the building. The section's list of buildings is the answer, not a guess from the name. Breaking in and then committing a felony does not, under this section, require the felonious intent to have existed at the moment of entry. Breaking out, without a felony committed inside, is not housebreaking under the lecture's reading of section 26(2).

Blackmail

Sections 29, 30 and 31: These are demands, not takings. Section 29 is the letter or writing, uttered knowing what it says, demanding with menaces, and without reasonable or probable cause. Uttering here means putting the writing into circulation. Section 30 is demanding with menaces. Section 31 is threatening to publish. A menace need not be a threat of violence. It is enough that it is something unpleasant or detrimental. Reasonable cause is a defence the prosecution must negative where the section requires the absence of it. Do not collapse the three sections into one offence.