Definition
An asportator is a person who carries away stolen goods. The term is a Latin-derived agent noun denoting the actor in the act of asportation — that is, the one who physically removes property belonging to another as part of a theft or larceny. In classical common law pleading and older English legal texts, the term distinguished the carrier of stolen goods from other potential participants in a theft, such as the principal thief or a receiver.
Why It Matters in Research
This is a narrow historical term with almost no circulation in modern legal writing. Researchers encountering asportator in primary sources — particularly medieval and early modern English legal texts — should treat it as a label for a specific role within a theft transaction, not a synonym for thief generally. The word is functionally obsolete in contemporary American and English legal usage, having been displaced by more descriptive language about principals, accessories, and aiders and abettors.
The significance of the term lies in its relationship to the doctrine of asportation, which remains alive as an element of common law larceny and is still actively litigated. When a historical source uses asportator, it signals that the author is analyzing whether the physical carrying-away element was satisfied and by whom — which matters for questions of principal liability, joint participation, and whether completed larceny had occurred. Researchers tracing the development of the asportation element in larceny doctrine will encounter this term in Fleta and similar treatises and should read it in that analytical context.
Do not confuse the appearance of asportator in a historical source with a complete theory of criminal liability. Medieval English law treated the roles of thief, carrier, and receiver as analytically distinct in ways that do not map cleanly onto modern accomplice liability frameworks.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary defines asportator simply as "one who carries away stolen goods," citing Fleta, lib. 1, c. 39, § 3. Fleta, a thirteenth-century English legal treatise written during the reign of Edward I, is one of the earliest systematic treatments of English common law and draws heavily on Bracton. The citation to Fleta anchors asportator firmly in medieval legal Latin usage.
Burrill offers no further elaboration, which itself is informative: the term had narrow, settled meaning and did not generate the definitional controversy that surrounded more contested common law concepts. Historical dictionaries are consistent on this point — the word is an agent noun, it refers to the carrier of stolen goods, and it derives directly from the Latin asportare (to carry away). No material divergence among historical sources is apparent, nor does Burrill suggest any jurisdictional variation in its use.
What historical dictionaries do not address is how the concept of the asportator evolved as English criminal law developed more sophisticated doctrines of complicity. By the time larceny doctrine was systematized in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the specific label had largely disappeared from active use even as the underlying analytical question — who performed the carrying away, and was it sufficient to complete the offense — remained central.
Jurisdictional Note
The term appears in English legal sources. It has no recognized usage in American statutory or case law. Researchers working in American common law larceny materials will encounter the doctrine of asportation but not this specific agent-noun label.