Definition
In old English law, intakers were a class of receivers of stolen goods operating on the northern border of England, particularly in Redesdale. The term describes those who accepted and concealed cattle and other plunder brought across the Scottish border by their confederates, known as "outparters." The intakers served the receiving end of a cross-border criminal network: the outparters raided into Scotland and drove stolen goods southward; the intakers harbored those goods and profits within English territory. The term is essentially archaic and has no surviving legal application in modern law.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Plural of intaker — one who takes in.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not separately defined; the compound follows naturally from "intake" and "taker" as a descriptive occupational term.
Editorial note: The ordinary sense of "intaker" — simply one who receives or takes something in — captures the functional role but entirely misses the criminal and jurisdictional context. In its legal sense, the term is specifically tied to the border-reiving culture of medieval Anglo-Scottish relations and carries the force of a statutory criminal designation, not a neutral description.
Common Confusion
Intakers are closely related to, but distinct from, the general category of receivers of stolen goods. The distinction lies in geography and organization: intakers operated within a defined territorial network tied to the Anglo-Scottish border, functioning as one half of a coordinated criminal partnership. A receiver of stolen goods under general common law need not be part of any such organized or geographically specific scheme. Rapalje & Lawrence partially conflates the two by defining intakers simply as "receivers of stolen goods," which understates the term's specificity. Additionally, do not confuse intakers with "in-takes" as discussed in the same Rapalje & Lawrence entry — in-takes refers to temporary enclosures made by customary tenants of a manor, a wholly unrelated concept that appears in proximity only as a typographical accident of the digest format.
Why It Matters in Research
This term is unlikely to appear in any modern legal context. Researchers will encounter it almost exclusively in: (1) historical English statutes, particularly 9 Hen. V c. 27, which Bouvier cites as the primary legislative source; (2) glossaries and antiquarian legal writing drawing on Spelman's Glossarium and Cowell's Interpreter; and (3) historical treatments of border law, reiving culture, and the Anglo-Scottish March jurisdictions.
The pairing of intakers with outparters is the essential research unit — neither term is fully intelligible without the other. Any source treating one should be examined for treatment of both. Researchers working in the history of receiving offenses, criminal complicity, or the development of accessory-after-the-fact doctrine may find intakers a useful early data point, though the term itself dropped out of legal vocabulary well before the modern law of receiving crystallized.
Bouvier's citation to 9 Hen. V c. 27 is the most useful statutory anchor and should be the first stop for primary source verification. Black's (both editions) and Burrill derive substantially from Spelman, so their entries are more glossarial than analytical.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries agree on the core definition: intakers were receivers of cross-border stolen goods in Redesdale, the northern English border region. Black's (1st and 2nd editions) and Burrill are nearly identical in language, all tracing to Spelman and Cowell as their authorities. Bouvier adds the most useful detail by anchoring the term to a specific statute — 9 Hen. V c. 27 — giving the entry documentary grounding the others lack.
Rapalje & Lawrence is the outlier. The entry collapses intakers into the broader category of receivers of stolen goods without preserving the border-specific context, which is the term's defining characteristic. This compression sacrifices precision for brevity and should be treated with caution.
None of the historical dictionaries address the outparters/intakers partnership as a criminal law structure in any analytical depth. The entries are definitional snapshots drawn from antiquarian glossaries rather than legal analysis. Researchers should not expect these sources to illuminate how, or whether, 9 Hen. V c. 27 was actually enforced or litigated.
Jurisdictional Note
Intakers is a term of English law with no recognized counterpart in Scots law or in American legal history. Its application was geographically limited to the Anglo-Scottish border region during the medieval and early modern periods. It has no operative significance in any current jurisdiction.