How have the courts treated cheques in the past?

Lord Goddard C.J. puts it this way in Davenport, pp. 570-71: … That could only have been done because everyone from the recorder downwards, seems to have been under a misapprehension with regard to the more or less elementary principles of the laws of banking and larceny. There was no larceny here because in larceny there must be an asportation – a taking and carrying away. The fallacy that led to this charge of stealing money was that it was thought that because the master’s account got debited that that was enough to make a theft. But although one talks about people having money in a bank, it should be understood that the only person who has money in a bank is a banker. If I pay money into my bank either by paying cash or a cheque, that money at once becomes the money of the banker. The relationship between banker and customer is that of debtor and creditor. He does not hold my money as an agent or trustee; the leading case of Foley v. Hill exploded that idea. Directly the money is paid into the bank it becomes the banker’s money, and the contract between the banker and the customer is that the banker receives a loan of money from the customer against his promise to honour the customer’s cheques on demand. When the banker is paying out, whether he pays in cash over the counter or whether he is crediting the bank account of somebody else, he is paying out his own money, not the customer’s money; but he is debiting the customer’s account. The customer has a chose in action, that is to say, a right to expect that the banker will honour his cheque. Therefore, in the present case, the money paid on these cheques was the banker’s money, but it led to the customer’s account being debited. …