Entry 1: Victorian England made the strongest locks in the world—until an American showed up and promised he could pick them.
On July 22, 1851, on a day when a visitor to London had any number of amusements at his disposal—from M. Gompertz’s Giant Panorama (“including a new diorama of intense interest”) at the Parthenium Rooms on St. Martin’s Lane, to the “Real Darkies from the South” (replete with “the Sayings and Doings and Lights and Shadows of the Ethiopian race”) appearing at Gothic Hall—a group of men assembled in a small room in Westminster.
They were drawn by a curious invitation: “To witness an attempt to open a lock throwing three bolts, and having six tumblers, affixed to the iron door of a strong room.”
The men gathered around the door to a vault, once the repository of records for the South-Eastern Railway. At their center was an unassuming figure, an American named Alfred C. Hobbs, clad in waistcoat and collar. At 11:35 a.m., Hobbs produced a few small tools from his pocket—“a description of which, for obvious reasons, we fear to give” a correspondent for the Times wrote—and turned his attention to the vault’s lock. His heavy brows knitted, Hobbs’ hands flitted about the lock with a faint metallic scratching. Twenty-five minutes later, it opened with a sharp click. Amid the excited murmur, the witnesses asked Hobbs to repeat the task. Having relocked the vault, he once again set upon it with deft economy. The vault opened “in the short space of seven minutes,” as the witnesses would testify, “without the slightest injury to the lock or the door.”
The lock was known as the “Detector,” and it needed no introduction. Indeed, since its patenting in 1818 by Jeremiah Chubb, a Portsmouth ironmonger, it had become one of the country’s most popular locks, advertised in the Bleak House serials and enshrined in magazine doggerel: “My name is Chubb, that makes the Patent Locks; Look on my works, ye burglars, and despair.” It was renowned for its impregnability, having survived any number of picking attempts; in one trial, a notorious London picklock, given a chance at a pardon if he could crack Chubb’s masterwork, testified “that these locks were the most secure he had ever met with, and that he did not think it possible for any man to pick or open them with any false instruments whatever.” But it was also famed for its “Detector,” an anti-picking lever that tripped the bolt if any of the lock’s six standard levers were lifted too high. “In this state the lock is what I call detected,” wrote Chubb in his patent, “and the possessor of the true key has evidence that an attempt has been made to violate the lock, because the true key will not now open it.” (If the lock had been violated, its owner could retrieve his belongings by using a “regulating key” that would not open the lock but rather restore it to its original, openable condition.)
Small Chubb Detector lock fitted to a circa-1910 guncase
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Given the failure of all previous picking attempts, the arrival on July 21 of a letter, headed “American Department, Crystal Palace,” at the firm’s offices likely brooked small concern. “An attempt will be made to open a lock of your manufacture on the door of a Strong-room at 34, Great George Street, Westminster, tomorrow, Tuesday, at 11 o'clock A.M. You are respectfully invited to be present, to witness the operation.” Chubb, perhaps mildly piqued, sent a man to watch. But the letter was a gauntlet, and it had been thrown. Hobbs had not only opened the lock, but he had opened it again. The Detector had been foiled....MOREHT: The Big Picture
