Our rival, the rascal : a faithful portrayal of the conflict between the criminals of this age and the defenders of society, the police . that the really skilled cracksman seems toconsider no preliminary effort too great to be undertaken inthe hope of such reward. In the Dorchester (England) Bankrobbery in the early part of this century, when locks were theonly safeguard and before burglars were skilled in the useof explosives, the burglars were in the house ninety-two nightsbefore they succeeded in opening all the locks by false keys which they fitted to lockand relock the doors. Thesame unti
Our rival, the rascal : a faithful portrayal of the conflict between the criminals of this age and the defenders of society, the police . that the really skilled cracksman seems toconsider no preliminary effort too great to be undertaken inthe hope of such reward. In the Dorchester (England) Bankrobbery in the early part of this century, when locks were theonly safeguard and before burglars were skilled in the useof explosives, the burglars were in the house ninety-two nightsbefore they succeeded in opening all the locks by false keys which they fitted to lockand relock the doors. Thesame untiring zeal is a dis-tinguishing mark of theburglar of to-day and al-though wonderful ad-vances have been made insafe construction, the in-troduction of powerful ex-plosives as agents forrobbery has rendered safe cracking, where possible, muchquicker work than the opening of the earlier forms of safes. When we look upon the latest triumphs of invention in theburglar proof safe, it seems almost incredible that they arethe development of a comparatively short period of iron safes are of quite modern date and fire-proof safes. DEPOSITORY FOR CROWN JEWELS OF SCOTLAND (17O7). THE BURGLAR PROOF SAFJJ. 393 were not introduced until the bcginnnig of this century. Priorto that time the only safes designed for protection againstburglary were oak chests, secured by one or more locks, whilethe only protection against fire was in brick or stone closetswith plain iron doors. Thefastenings were secured by com-mon warded locks or with ironbands with hasps, staples, andpadlocks. A typical safe of thisdescription is the oak chestmanufactured as a depository forthe crown jewels ofScotland, in 1707. Thiswas secured by threelocks, all of which wereforced open in the pres-ence of the royal com-missioners in 1818, thekeys having been learn from this thatas late as 1818 these sim-ple locks (which couldeasily have been picked by a bent skewer) were considered toointricate to be opened b
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectcr, booksubjectpolice
