Lost and found

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Lost property redirects here. For the legal concept, see Lost, mislaid, and abandoned property.

For other uses, see Lost and Found (disambiguation).

Lost property office symbol at a small railway station in Poland

A lost and found (American English) or lost property (British English), usually found at large public places, is where visitors can go to retrieve lost articles that may have been found by other visitors. Frequently found at museums, amusement parks, schools, etc., a lost and found will typically be a box or room in a location near the main entrance. It would be clearly marked so that anyone who has found a misplaced article, or misplaced an article themselves, can find it.

Better organized lost and found offices will try to contact the owners of any lost items if there are any clues available (for example in the contents of a suitcase). Practically all either sell, give or throw away items after a certain period has passed to clear their storage.

[edit] History

The first lost and found was organized in Paris in 1805. Napoleon ordered his prefect of police to establish the office as a central place "to collect all objects found in the streets of Paris," according to Jean-Michel Ingrandt, who was appointed the office's director in 2001.^[1] However, it was not until 1893 that Louis Lepiné, then-prefect of police, organized efforts to actively track down the owners of lost items.^[1]

[edit] Organization

Lost and found offices at large organizations can handle an improbably large and varied collection of articles. Transport for London's lost property offices (which handle items lost on the city's Tube, buses and taxis) handles over 130,000 items a year, including 24,000 bags and 10,000 mobile phones; among the more peculiar items that have been handed in include a wedding dress, ashes in an urn, a longcase clock, a kitchen sink, and several wheel chairs.^{[citation needed]}

Other large organizations may lack a central lost and found office but have several offices attached to different administrative units. This is the case, for instance, at the University of Illinois, where different campus units have both distinct offices and different unofficial retention and resolution policies (rules for how long to keep items and what to do with them once that period has expired). In addition to such distributed offices, a cross-unit office might also exist; again referring to the University of Illinois, this cross-functional unit rests in the Campus Police (Division of Public Safety).^[2]

[edit] References

^ ^a ^b Tagliabue, John (2005-05-23), "Napoleon's monument to everything", The New York Times, <http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/05/23/news/journal.php>. Retrieved on 2007-08-07
^ Sharita Forest. "Mom, Where's My Shoe?", Illinois Alumni, Volume 19, Issue 1, UI News Bureau, July/August 2006, p. 7.