There is another manner in which larceny may be committed where the offender is not an agent of the owner of the property. This occurs in a case where the owner puts his property in the bare custody of another without delivering possession, for some specific purpose. For example, the owner handed a hack driver a five dollar bill to get it changed, that he might pay the hack driver his fare out of the same for carrying him from the railroad depot to a hotel. The hack driver did not return, but disappeared and appropriated the money to his own use. The court held this to be a case of larceny.26

So on the same principle, if money be placed in the hands of another for the special purpose of paying the owner's debt with it and that person feloniously appropriates it to his own use he is guilty of larceny, though he is not the servant of the owner.

But if the money had been delivered to that person not merely as custodian for a special purpose, but to be kept for the owner or used for him in some investment or otherwise, then such appropriation of it would not be larceny but embezzlement, for the reason that that person has not only the custody but the possession also.

24 Id.

25 Reg. vs. Goode, C. & M., 825;

18 Am. and Eng. Ency. Law, 475 (2nd Ed.).

26 Farrell vs. People, 16 111., 505; Reg. vs. Bird, 12 Cox, 257.