UNSHUTTERED LONDON

Manawatu Times, Volume LIII, Issue 6630, 8 June 1928, Page 2

UNSHUTTERED LONDON

To-day wo nay—just a little tremulously, maybe—the burglar is cleverer and more daring than ever ho was. And we talk of the need for increasing the efficiency of our locks, bolts, and bars —never seeming to notice that our London of nowadays is a much less enclosed and shut-up-looking place at night than the London of a century ago (says a London Evening News writer). Great-grand-father’s sturdy apprentices had some heavy work to do when it was closing time in his city shop. Now the jeweller has steel walls between his windows and the street when night falls, but modern advertising sense commands that more and more shop windows shall bo open to the gaze of passers-by—even when wo should imagine there are no passers-by to stop and look! In some parts of London, in out-of-the-way streets, you can still see tiny shops with the old shutters, but, so turns the wheel of time, these aro just the shops to -which no modern burglar would give a thought. For the rest, those light iron gates—or even fancy wooden ones, sometimes! —with which we just protend to guard the entrances to the new shops would make great-grand-father tremble for the safety of our property, if he could come back and see them! Lighter streets and keener policemen are giving night-time London the chance of looking a much easier city to sack! But the impression is deceptive. For now we keep our perfected fortifications—bells, electric shocks, steel and concrete, and combination locks—inside, hidden behind that external London that looks ever less awesome and more gay.