There are places where the jimmy is absolutely indispensable to the
burglar. Front doors, which a house proprietor usually has doubly
bolted and barred and supplied with improved locks, are the last
apertures in the world a night marauder would seek to enter.
It must be an amusing thing to the burglar, after noting the
precautions taken to prevent his entrance by the street door, when
he has walked through the skylight on the roof without the slightest
resistance, or dropped through the coal-hole leading to the cellar
from the sidewalk, to find that no doors bar his passage from there to
the rooms above.
Those are the popular ways of getting into many banks and business
houses. The basement door, at the rear, if there is one, is another.
In such case the jimmy is the magic wand that opens the way. It
is more useful to the burglar than any half dozen of his other
implements, and is the first thing he purchases when getting an outfit.
How do safe burglars get their tools? Why, every man of any account in
that line has what he calls "his man," who is a practical mechanic,
and makes everything in the shape of jimmies, punches, etc., that the
burglar uses. A safe blower's outfit consists of many curious tools,
some of them being of special design for some particular class of work
of which the owner is the originator. Scarcely any two men work alike,
and some of the clever ones invent instruments to do a certain part
of their work. When a well-known notorious crook was arrested several
years ago in his room, the officers found one of the finest kits
of burglars' tools that was ever brought into police headquarters.
Talk about ingenuity--if that man had applied but one-third of the
intelligence to a legitimate business that he had spent in devising
tools for robbery, he would have been a millionaire today.
Twenty years ago when burglars started out to rob a safe they filled
a carpet sack with highly tempered drills, copper sledges, sectional
jimmies, dark lanterns, powder and a fuse. On the way they stole
a horse and wagon, filling the latter with the greater portion of
the tools of a country blacksmith shop. They would work on the safe
from four to six hours, and finally blow it open with a fine grade
of ducking powder. Usually the shock would break all the glass in
the building, arouse the town, and the burglars would often have
to fight for their lives. In those days the men had to be big and
powerful, because the work was extremely laborious. If the burglar
was an ex-prize fighter or noted tough, so much the better, for he
could make a desperate resistance in case he was caught in the act, or
immediately after it.
With the modern safe burglar it is almost totally different. Although
much more skillful and successful than his predecessor, he is more
conservative. He seldom runs his own head into danger, and therefore
seldom endangers the head of a law-abiding citizen by permitting his
head to come into contact with him or the job while it is under way.
Every precaution is taken against being surprised, and it is seldom
the robbery is discovered until the cashier's appearance the next
morning. The modern safe burglar is an exceedingly keen, intelligent
man. He can open a safe having all modern improvements in from ten
minutes to two hours without the aid of explosives and by only
slightly defacing the safe. Sometimes he leaves scarcely a mark.
A first-class modern safe, whether large or small, generally has
double outside and inside doors, with a steel chest in the bottom,
forming really a safe within a safe, the inside being the stronger.
The outside door is usually either "stuffed" or "skeleton." The
inside one is made of eight or nine sheets, of different temper,
of the finest steel. These sheets are bolted together with conical
bolts having left-hand threads, after which the heads of the bolts
are cut off, leaving what is virtually a solid piece of steel, which
no drill can penetrate. The best locks are of the combination type,
with time lock attachment. In many cities and town safes containing
the valuables have an electric alarm attached. Any tampering with it
will communicate the fact to the owners or the safe's guardian, which
in cities is either an electric protective bureau or a central police
station. A recent invention in France is a photographic attachment. As
soon as the safe is touched this device will light an electric lamp,
photograph the intruder and give the alarm at the electric protective
company's office. As a consequence safe-breaking is going out of date
in France, as the cleverest criminals have so far failed to find a way
to circumvent the camera.
The first thing considered by a gang of the finest experts is a
desirable bank's location and the chances for getting safely
away with the plunder. Every transportation facility is
carefully considered. As the work is almost invariably done at the
season of the year when wagon roads are impassible, railroad time
tables are carefully considered. In these days of the telegraph and
telephone the gang must be under cover in a large city or concealed
with friends by the time the crime is discovered, which, at the
utmost, is about six hours after the crime has been committed.
From November 1 to March 1 is the safe burglar's harvest time,
because then the nights are longest and the chances of detection
less, as fewer people are on the streets and houses adjoining, being
tightly closed to exclude the cold, exclude noises also. A man can,
furthermore, carry tools in an overcoat without attracting attention,
that he could not wear with a summer suit. The remainder of the year
is spent in "marking" the most desirable banks for future operations.
Four men, who compose the ordinary safe mob, will put up from thirty
to forty "jobs" for a winter's work, allowing for all contingencies.
From six to ten of these will be carried out. A bank safe will be
broken into in a small town in Maine, and in ten days the gang will be
operating in Texas.
[Illustration: (Burglar blowing up safe, part 1)]
[Illustration: (Burglar blowing up safe, part 2)]
[Illustration: (Burglar blowing up safe, part 3)]
[Illustration: (Burglar blowing up safe, part 4)]
[Illustration: (Burglar blowing up safe, part 5)]
[Illustration: (Burglar blowing up safe, part 6)]
Having decided on a bank, the habits of the cashier and other chief
employees are carefully studied; but, above all, of those who visit
the bank after working hours, chief of whom is the watchman, if the
bank has one. If the watchman drinks, or spends time visiting women
when he should be at the bank, the bank is an easy prey. Weeks, and
sometimes even months, are spent in putting up a job of magnitude, and
a number of smaller jobs are done to carry out one where the proceeds
may run into the tens of thousands of dollars.
Men visit the town who have a legitimate business as a "blind." They
make all preliminary preparations. The greatest ingenuity is employed
to obtain exact information, such as the evenings the cashier or
teller is likely to visit the bank and the exact time.