Our rival, the rascal : a faithful portrayal of the conflict between the criminals of this age and the defenders of society, the police . to-day. This is a remarkable transformation but,jas we shall show, it is a natural one, an evo-lution inevitably forced by the change ofconditions afifecting the craft of fails to hand down to us thename of the first bank burglar, but it ispractically certain that he sprung up withsome rude tool in his hand within a yearor two after the opening of the first his needs little skill or equipment wasrequired. With a few prods and heav
Our rival, the rascal : a faithful portrayal of the conflict between the criminals of this age and the defenders of society, the police . to-day. This is a remarkable transformation but,jas we shall show, it is a natural one, an evo-lution inevitably forced by the change ofconditions afifecting the craft of fails to hand down to us thename of the first bank burglar, but it ispractically certain that he sprung up withsome rude tool in his hand within a yearor two after the opening of the first his needs little skill or equipment wasrequired. With a few prods and heaves of a common crowbar, he could tear a bolted door from its hinges or smash a lockor panel with his heavy sledge hammer. Brute strength andthe cover of night or the temporary absence of watchers werethe only essentials for success in those old days. But with the easy triumph of the first burglaries, the bankerstook warning and began to defend their deposits with re-doubled precaution. Armed watchmen were kept on dutyboth night and day, vaults of stone and iron were built tosupplant the insecure chambers, and heavily barred strong-. THE MODERN BANK BURGLAR. FJWM JIMMIES TO DYNAMITE. ^7 boxes were fashioned as safes to hold money, jewels andpapers of .value. As the bankers racked their brains moreand more in the provision of safeguards, so the robbers, inturn, were forced to devise counter-plots and new weaponsof ofifence to keep pace with the rising blocks in their from earliest history there has been an unending conflictof wits, a neck to neck race of the banker and the burglar,the one, striving by every resort in his power to intrench histreasure and bar out the thief, and the other, straining everynerve to pass the barriers and plunder the strongholds. For thousands of years the wily burglar might claim tohave won the crown in the race. If a vault was constructedwith walls so massive that it might seemingly defy a hail stormof cannon balls, bitter experience would pro
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectcr, booksubjectpolice
