THE SCIENCE OF BURGLARY.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVII, Issue XVIII, 31 October 1896, Page 579

THE SCIENCE OF BURGLARY.

The modern burglar is a scientist and inventor in his way. Recently a new era in safe-breaking and other branches of the cracksman’s art has opened, and the famous jimmy, so long rampant on the successful burglar’s coat of arms, is to be superseded by more convenient labour-saving tools. In Marseilles the other day a gang of ingenious cracksmen entered a banker’s office armed with a steel saw of the newest construction and a handy little gas-engine. There was no need for the exercise of muscle, nor was there any necessity for a good strong wrist at the saw, as there was at one time in the annals of famous robberies. The light engine was started, the saw put in the proper place, and the connections made. Seating themselves serenely upon a couple of chairs near at hand, these modern burglars watched the true and rapid work of their appliances, The big safe might have resisted for hours the force of human hands, but the saw, impelled by the engine, it could not stand against. The stout iron safe promptly yielded up its contents of over worth of gold and bonds, and in a quarter of the time it would have taken to have committed the robbery under the old conditions the burglars were well out ot the building with their booty.