It Has Taken the Place of Dynamite and the Jimmy in Advanced Safe
Looting.
Scientific Equipment of Burglar Includes High-Class Automobile.
Jobs at Country Houses Usually Planned Far in Advance, and With
Intimate Knowledge of Loot To Be Gained.
[Illustration: _HOW BURGLAR UNLOCKS DOORS._
Unlocking a door is one of the easiest tasks of the professional
burglar. His ingenuity defies the efforts of locksmiths to invent
safety devices. The picture shows how an expert turns a key in the
lock, and also a simple device to prevent this.]
The up-to-date burglar must have a motor car, the use of which is
only a part of his scientific equipment. That the modern burglar
does not consider that he is properly equipped unless he possesses a
motor car is an incontrovertible fact. House-breaking nowadays has
been reduced to a science. The use of gloves renders detection by
finger prints impossible. Besides, the modern burglar's tools are most
scientifically made. The men who make it their business to manufacture
these tools are first-class workmen.
The majority of large country burglaries are planned for days in
advance, and every detail is most carefully arranged. In some
mysterious manner the word is conveyed to the gang that a visit will
be made on a certain day, by a member of the household which it is
intended to rob, to a jeweler's shop. The train is met at the terminus
and the person followed to the jeweler's or wherever they go.
When they enter the shop a man strolls in casually and makes some
inquiries. While an assistant is attending to his supposed wants it
is very easy for him to see what the person at the same counter is
purchasing and, having obtained all the necessary information, the man
leaves and imparts all his information to his confederates.
Before a county ball or such function a visit to the jeweler's is
often necessary to get the family diamonds, and the fact that this
visit is going to be made is either communicated or anticipated, and
the same system of following is put in operation. Equipped with all
the desired information, the modern burglar then brings his motor car
into operation. There is no tedious waiting for trains; he simply
drives down to the "crib" and avoids the old-fashioned way of taking a
train at a small wayside station, with the chances of being arrested
on his arrival in the metropolis.
If he is noticed on the road he is taken for a rich man touring in
his car, and if a great social function is in progress he is regarded
as a belated guest. The car is carefully stalled in an obscure place
while the robbery takes place. The booty is subsequently placed in it
and a quick trip back to town is made. The police are left practically
without a single clew.
Those members of the community who make a business, or a profession,
rather, of burglary keep up with the march of science quite as closely
as do people in a more legitimate calling.
The burglar of today is a vastly differently equipped individual from
the one of a generation ago. He must of necessity be an enterprising
and daring man, and in addition to that if he would make a success
of safe cracking in this twentieth century he must be something of
a scientist as well. The great progress made in the manufacture of
safes for the storage of valuables has brought about this revolution
in the burglar's methods, and it is a regrettable fact to note that no
matter how strong and secure safes may be made, the ingenuity of the
scientific burglar is pretty sure to devise some method to overcome
their security.
The most recent development in the burglar's advancement is the use of
electricity to open safes in place of the old-time jimmy and the more
recent dynamite.