LSS+ Electronic Infobase Edition Version 5.

should be bedded into brickwork set in Portland cement and sand;

or, what is much better, in hard granite or gritstone masonry,
bedded in like manner. Without this be done, a fire-proof safe is
simply a delusion; constructed how it may be, it is only a
crucible of more or less badly-conducting power, in which, after
a time longer or shorter, deeds, bank-notes, documents, etc.,
will be calcified, and coin or jewelry melted, and gems flawed
and destroyed.

We say this in the full face of the delusive so-called "fiery

ordeals" to which many of the so-called double-cased fire-proof
safes are alleged to have been for hours exposed. The safe should
always be embedded in masonry, and rest upon that in such a way
that it cannot get undermined by either fire or burglars.

Whenever the premises admit of it, the door of the safe itself
should be set back ten or twelve inches from the face of the wall
in which it is embedded, and an outer door, flush with the face
of the wall, should be provided of iron, with a good lock and
multiple bolts. The door of the safe should open to the right;
and if so, the outer door should open to the left; and neither
should open more than square to their position when shut.

No one but a practical workman or engineer can have an adequate

notion of the extent to which any mechanical operation upon the
door of a safe thus circumstanced is hampered by its being set
back into the wall, and with an outer door that even when open,
cuts off all ready manual access to the inner door from one side.

When premises are constructed, as they should be for all banks

and bullion merchants, jewelers, etc., having special regard to a
safe as an indisputably secure depository, then the safe should
be completely iron or steel cased, and embedded in hard stone
masonry (we shall not here go into additional special precautions
against the remoter effects of fire), covered in with a strong
fire-brick arch, and with nothing but the solid ground below.

The door of the safe should only be approachable through an iron

or stone-lined passage, just the size of the safe-door, and no
more. This should be some feet in length, and have an outer
double cased steel door, or perhaps that and an intermediate iron
falling-door or portcullis, between the outer door and the
safe-door. With a safe-door so circumstanced, even supposing both
these outer doors forced and open, it is almost impracticable for
even a single workman, however agile or adroit, to perform any
mechanical operation whatever upon the door, least of all upon
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(c) 1999-2004 Marc Weber Tobias