BANKS AND BURGLARS

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 4347, 11 January 1938, Page 7

BANKS AND BURGLARS

SAFEBREAKERS AND SAFEMAKERS MODERN VAULT CLAIMED IMPREGNABLE

Has modern engineering made the bank vault impregnable? The safebreaker is still heard of occasionally, but his operations are usually confined to second-hand safes, installed in small businesses, and as a result the returns for his labour are small. The bank vault, with its great wealth in notes and bonds, is left alone by the safebreaker Formerly the safe-breaker represented the pinnacle of the burglary profession, but to-day he has been supplanted by the hold-up man. In the United States, where over a period of years there have been more bank robberies than in any other country in the world, there have been 2,200 holdups of banks by gunmen during the past 10 years. Does this mean that the hold-up is more profitable than safebreaking? It is certainly less arduous and more perilous. A hold-up can be carried out much more expeditiously than a burglarious attack on a safe or vault, and the motor car provides the gunmen with good prospects of escaping the pursuit to which their daylight operations expose them. But the manufacturers of safes and vaults claim that the reason why the safebreaker has gone out of business is that the modern safe and vault are impregnable. It may be, however, that the present immunity from the attention of burglars enjoyed by banks is only temporary. Statistics v’lth regard to bank burglaries in the United States show that from time to time there have been lulls For a period ot some years the safebreakers have been particularly active, and then there has been a lull in bank burglaries for some years. Then the figures rise again, and subsequently show another decline. The explanation of these fluctuations is that for the past 70 years safemakers and safebreakers have pitted their skill against one another, and in this contest victory has alternately favoured one side, and then the other Yhen safemakers found that burglars had solved the problem of opening their latest '‘burglar-proof” safes they set to work on new inventions which would defy the efforts of the burglars.

The first big bank burglary in the history of crime in the United States took place on September 25, 1865, when the Concord (Massachusetts) National Bank was robbed of 350,000 dollars (£70,000) in coin, notes, and negotiable securities. The burglars left behind no evidence of how they had opened the doors of the bank and the safes. There were no marks of violence on the woodwork or on the safes. It was not until some time later that the police discovered how the robbery had been effected. The burglars were Langdon W Moore and Henry Howard. Moore had a farm at Natick, a few miles out of Concord, and for many nights over a period of six months he and Howard had entered the bank after midnight, and had worked for several hours trying skeleton keys on the doors and safes.

Keyholes of the safes were of a peculiar English design, and it was impossible to take impressions of them But this did not dishearten Moore. He ascertained who were the American agents for this type of safe, and he visited their premises as a prospective buver of a safe. He obtained from the agents a full explanation _ of the mechanism of the locks, and in consequence was able to design keys which unlocked the safes of the Concord National Bank. On the night of the burglary he drove with Howard to the bank iii a phseton, opened all the doors with forged keys, removed 350,(KX)c10l in coin, notes, and securities, and relocked all the doors when he departed, Moore and Howard robbed other banks in the eastern States by means of keys they manufactured. The biggest burglary in the history of crime in the United States took place nine years later. Jimmy Hope was the chief member of the gang which did the job. On the morning of Monday, October 28. 1878, the cashier of the Manhattan Savings Institution found, on arriving at the bank for the day s work, that there was a jagged opening in the side of the vault, which had been considered impregnable. The booty secured by the burglars in cash, notes, and bonds, totalled the very large sum of 2,747,000d0l (£549,400). The magnitude of this burglary triumph stunned financial circles in the United States, for it meant that no bank vault in existence was burglar-proof. Depositors began to withdraw their money from the banks and to hide it for safety. The burglars had obtained admittance by undermining the floor, and using wedges, pry-bars, jack screws, and explosives to make a hole in the vault SAFEMAKERS AND SAFEBREAKERS. The contest between safebreakers, and safemakers dates from the Concord burglary of the National Bank in 1860. As a result of the alarm created among bankers by that successful burglary, by means of forged keys, bankers demanded from safe manufacturers a keyless-locking mechanism. A keyless combination lock had been invented as far back as 1813 by an Englishman named Perkins. By means of a number of washers which cpntrolled the locking mechanism a considerable number of combinations could be applied, out of which only the correct combination would unlock the door. J. H. Butterworth, of Dover, New Jersey, invented a dial combination lock which has formed the basis of the locking system of safes and vaults ever since. Using 100 numbers on a dial, and four circular tumblers turning on their axes, there are 100,000,000 possible combinations. At the rate of trying one combination each minute, it would take 190 years to exhaust all the possible combinations By 1867 the combination dial lock was accepted as the standard lock for safes. It put at end to the key school of safe crackers. The burglars adopted new methods to meet the situation. They kept a close watch on the officials of the bank they intended to rob, discovered which of them set the combination when work was finished for the day, followed him to his home, broke in after midnight, and threatened him with death if ho did not disclose the combination. When torture was applied, such as burning the official’s feet with a lamp, he usually gave way and disclosed the

combination. This method of bank robbery was continued for some years, but it was circumvented by the invention of James Sargent’s time combination lock, by which a locked safe or vault could not be opened until the time previously fixed for opening had arrived. As the time fixed was usually the hour for beginning business on the following day the burglars were thwarted.

Their reply to the time-combination lock was to blow the safes open with dynamite. The safe makers tried to prevent this by tightening up the door jamb so that dynamite could not be inserted in the crack. In the nineties a bank burglar, known among ins associates as Michigan 'Red, discovered that nitro-gjycerine. the active property of dynamite, could be extracted by a simple chemical process from fullers’ earth and other compounds, and that nitre-glycerine, being a liquid, could be poured into the locking mechanism of the doors of safes and vaults to produce explosions. The burglars experienced some difficulty in learning how much nitro glycerine to use, and in acquiring this information about 20 of them lost their lives through using too much to blow open safes. One of these victims was Michigan Red. For 10 years the safe breakers were triumphant, for manufacturers were unable to produce a metal alloy which would withstand nitro-glycerine. But in 1890 Sir Robert Hadfield announced the invention of manganese steel, which which could not be drilled or destroyed by explosives. With the use of this steel safe makers designed the screwdoor safe with adjustments so fine that a piece of tissue paper on one of the jambs would prevent the door from locking. There 'fras no space in the screw-door safe for burglars to put even half a thimbleful of “ soup,” as they termed nitro-glycerine. The day of the “ puff-and-rod ” burglar, who used the drill and explosive, was over. Bank burglars were some time in discovering that the oxy-acetlyene torch provided a means of burning through the door of the safe made of manganese steel The credit of _ the discovery is given to an American burglar named Oakland Tommy, who, one cold, night, sought warmth near the furnace of an iron mill, and saw one of the workmen, with a blazing torch in his hand, burning the cooled metal and slag out of “ frozen ” ladles. According to tradition, Oakland Tommy got a job at the mill in order to learn how to use the torch. In 1913 bank burglars in the United States opened 34 safes with the oxyacetylene torch, but by 1924 it was in general use. and 234 banks were burgled. Up to this time most of the safes in use in the United States were cumbersome affairs of iron, _ bolted and strapped together with iron bands. A moderately skilled cracksman had little difficulty in picking their locks, or taking impressions of them and manufacturing keys that would open them. To circumvent the burglars the manufacturers of safes decided to put the locking mechanism of the doors inside instead of outside. The reply of the burglars to this device was the use of explosives to blow open the safes. At first gunpowder was the explosive used The first time it was used by burglars in conjunction with the drill was in 1865 on a safe in the office of manufacturers on Staten Island, New York. BIG HAULS. In 1869 a gang of three American burglars began operations on a large scale. The members of this gang were Jimmy Hope, Mick Shinburn, and Ned Lyons. Hope obtained a lease of a basement store underneath premises occupied by the Ocean National Bank, at the corner of Fulton and Greenwich streets, New York City. His stock in trade consisted chiefly of carpets, but he did not try to push the business. He was more interested in finding a way into the bank premises above his shop. The gang made a hole in the ceiling, and entered the bank in this way on the night of June 27, 1869. They drove wedges into the crack between the door of the vault and the wall, and with a pack screw prized the door from the jamb, and forced back the holts. The door of a safe inside the vault was blown open with gunpowder, and the burglars secured a haul of 1,200,000d0l (£240,0001 in cash and bonds. The burglary created an immense sensation throughout the United States, and it had a very disturbing effect upon bankers. The loss of 1,200,000d0l would have rendered the Ocean National Bank insolvent, but Congress went to its rescue by passing an Act nullifying the negotiable bonds stolen by the burglars. The next engineering implement to be applied by burglars to their profession was the oxygen lance, a piece of wrought iron pipe connected directly by a high-pressure hose to a tank of oxygen. The end of the pipe is heated by a hand torch to burning _temperahire. and then the oxygen is turned on. The lance can cut a hole through a lOin steel door in 30sec. It is equally effective in dealing with granite and reinforced concrete. But safe and vault manufacturers have replied with a new steel made from a secret formula which offers considerable resistance to the oxygen lance. They have increased the thickness of the doors of bank vaults to 2 and 3 feet, and they have connected the doors with burglar alarms, which are set in motion by even a tap on the door. It is claimed that the modern bank vault is impregnable. But critics who know that this claim has often been made before insist that even the modern vault is impi’egnable only until it is proved to be otherwise. From time to time something happens to the locking mechanism of even a modern vault, and experts have to be called in to open the vault door. These experts are highly-skilled artisans, employed by the manufacturers of vaults and safes If they can open the “ frozen ” dooi of a locked vault a burglar might be able to do the same. One way or another, the skill and knowledge at the disposal of the artisan might be acquired hv the burglar. The question whether the immunity banks are enjoying from burglary is temporary or permanent is one that only the future can answer.

Even when the fighting was hottest, the colonel of an Irish regiment noticed that one of the privates was following him everywhere, with apparently much devotion. At length he called the man to him and said; “/You’ve stuck to me well to-day, Private*'Rooney.” “ Yis, sor,” replied Rooney./saluting smartly. “ Me ould mother sjfez to me, sez her: ‘ Patrick, my bhoy, 7 stick to the colonel, and ye’ll be all right; them colonels nivir git hurt.”