Safeguards Against Thieves

1888

A Reformed Burglar Tells Householders How to Protect Their Property

First of all, I may say that the householder, especially if his house is situated in the suburbs, should count as next to nothing the protection afforded by the night policeman on his beat. I don't mean to insinuate that the night policeman neglects his duty. I believe that, as a rule, he performs it as well as he is able to, and it may be pretty safely relied on that at each time he passes a row of villas he will cast the light of his bull's eye over the front garden, if there is one, and over the house front, and the lower windows and street door. If there is no front garden, he will see that all is right and tight in the area as well. But his beat is a long one, and it is probable he will not pass that way again for an hour, or perhaps longer. So that if there is a job afoot all that those engaged in it have to do is to hide and see the policeman off and they then know exactly how much time they have to get through their work before he can make his appearance again.

Speaking from my experience, and from that of others with whom I have been acquainted, I should say that at least a fourth part of the number of private house burglaries that are successfully committed are assisted by servants. But speaking of ordinary work it is the female servants who are made useful and that quite innocently on their part. Masters and mistresses have no idea what easy simpletons many girls in service are, or how easily they are induced to betray the secrets of the house. And not only girls, but women, cooks and housemaids, who are old enough to know better. A smart chap, with plenty to say and with money to spend, has but to scrape acquaintance with the kind of servants I am alluding to when they are out for church on Sunday and meet them a few times afterward, and he can learn all he wants to know respecting the valuable stuff in the house and where it is kept, and the ways and habits of their employers and when they are at home and when away.

It is not often the burglar himself who in this way goes a-fishing for useful information. Generally speaking, he is not what may be called a "ladies' man." He is very well in his own line, but he hasn't got the good looks or the insinuating ways that go down with the fair sex. That part of the programme is intrusted to the "sweetstuff man." He is an affable, well spoken young fellow, very respectably dressed, and so respectable in his manner that even if he was caught in the kitchen with the servants at houses where followers are strictly prohibited his appearance would disarm suspicion.

It should not be forgotten that the burglar has no particular desire in the pursuit of his calling to run his head into more danger than is necessary, and there is nothing that is so much to his liking as parapet work — getting in at attic windows that are screened by the roof parapet. Not one householder in a score gives a thought as to the security of the attic window. He will have the street door iron plated, with a patent lock on it, and a chain strong enough to hold an elephant, but a catch that can be put back with a bradawl is good enough for the attic window, and all the time it is quite as easy to enter by one way as the other — if the houses stand in a row and one of them happens to be empty. This is one of the opportunities the fraternity are always on the lookout for.

Nothing can be easier than to enter an unoccupied house at the basement, and once within all a man has to do is to walk upstairs and go out on to the parapet, and there, well screened from view by the coping, he can creep on his hands and knees, and by means of the attic windows get into any house he has a fancy for. If it is winter time, and after dark, he will have no difficulty in taking stock of the front windows before he makes the accent, and so ascertaining which of the front rooms are occupied or if the family is at dinner. If the latter he can be pretty sure that the servants are all down stairs, and he can explore the upper rooms without much fear of interruption. This wouldn't be called in the profession tip top work, but it is a means by which householders lose a considerable amount of portable property, and it very rarely happens that the robber is caught in the act.

As regards house fastenings there is, in my opinion, nothing safer for windows than a long thumb screw in a socket, going right through the frame and deep into the sash on both sides of the window. I don't know if there have been any wonderful inventions in that way since I took an interest in such things, but I never saw a door fastener except the thumb screw that should give a workman a minute's trouble. For the street door there is nothing so good as a flat bar fastened to a pivot to the center, so that it will extend across the jambs and drop into slots made on the plan of a watch and chain swivel. For window shutters the cheapest and best protection is a lightly hung bell on a coil spring. But better than locks, bolts and bars is a wiry little dog that, roaming loose, will open his pipes and let all the house know it the moment he hears a suspicious noise at door or window. — London Telegraph.

If Bullets Were of Butter

1903

Curious Phenomena of Penetration of Glass By Soft Objects

Somebody — probably that indefatigable interviewer, Lord Mahon — once asked the Duke of Wellington why Souham did not press him more closely in that terrible retreat from Bourgos in 1812, during which, out of a total of about 31,000 men, he lost 7,000 by disease, straggling and desertion. "Because," he replied, "the French had learned that our bullets were not made of butter!" No doubt they were very awkward "pats," those terrible leaden spheres, weighing twelve to the pound, which Brown Bess spread with such deadly result up to her effective range of a little over 100 yards, and the lesson had been read to French conscripts upon many a bloody field. What would have been the bill of mortality had these bullets really been made of butter? An idle question, it may seem, yet one upon which I was set cogitating the other day by a singular incident.

Returning one evening to my own house. I noticed a large round hole in the plate glass window of the library, as if a football had been driven through it. There were no boys about, or the cause might have been such as saute aux veux. Upon reaching the library, I found the floor covered with shattered glass, showing that the impact had been from the outside, but nothing was visible within to account for it. The hole in the plate glass window of the library was as if a football had been driven through the window frame.

More puzzled than ever, I summoned my better half to discuss the problem. She, being of a practical turn, began looking under the furniture for the agent of destruction; while I stood idle, considering such search superfluous, mutely speculating how the deuce a plate glass window was to be replaced in a remote corner of western Scotland. For, mark ye, it was in the first days of the recent frost, and a keen north wind was blowing through the orifice. Presently my wife exclaimed: "Here it is, poor thing!" Between a large arm chair and the fireplace crouched a hen pheasant, which I caught. It showed no wound or sign of damage and straggled vigorously to get free. When it was released upon the terrace it flew a short distance, alighted, ran away strongly and was seen no more. It seems to me very remarkable that a bird should fly uninjured through plate glass as simply as a circus rider jumps through a paper hoop. One has always been told that any man of ordinary strength can drive his fist through a door panel. The only one whom I ever knew to attempt it succeeded, indeed, but at the cost of a dislocated little finger knuckle. It was explained to him that if he had aimed at a point a foot behind the panel instead of at the panel itself, his hand would have passed through without a scratch. But who is there of fortitude to put that to the test? How often has one not cause to wonder at the thickness and strength of an oaken rail through which the slender cannonbone of a horse may be driven, often without an abrasion of the skin. Reverse the process; let the horse's leg be stationary; and the oaken rail be driven against it at high velocity, and who can doubt which would be shattered?

A signal example of the imperious nature of momentum was given a few years ago, when a horse ran off with his rider in the Mall or Constitutional Hill (I forget which), charged the high iron railings in front of Buckingham palace, made a clean breach in them, and both landed unhurt within the inclosure. Force is undoubtedly one of the most intangible, inexplicable of mysteries. One is warned against the use of anthropomorphic terms in discussing it, which tend to divert the intellect from precise analysis, and we are bidden to regard it as no more than the rate per unit of length at which energy is transferred or transformed. But this carries the ordinary mind not very far, in fact, no distance at all, in apprehending what avails in the transference of energy from a soft substance to a hard one, to protect from injury such vulnerable surfaces as the skin on a horse's leg against oak or iron, or a hen pheasant's head against plate glass. — Herbert Maxwell in London Pall Mall Gazette.

Trussed Turkey Smashes Window to Smithereens

New Mexico, 1920

Turkey Smashes Plate Glass Window

On Monday an 8-pound turkey, although its feet were tied, managed to fly out of a truck on Main street and from there flew straight across the street and clear through the plate glass window of Manasse Bros. store. The window was smashed to smithereens but, so far as could be discovered, the turkey failed to sustain the slightest damage.

—The Rio Grande Republic, Las Cruces, New Mexico, October 21, 1920, page 1.