LSS+ Electronic Infobase Edition Version 5.

its surrounding rabbates. These are so close to the solid granite

walls, starting out at right angles from the rabbate all round,
that he has no room to do anything; and to get a prizing-bar at
the door-rabbate or even to get a second man to assist the first
in any way, is impossible, simply for want of room.

The whole of the doors and all the surfaces of such passage
should be painted a dull, lustreless black. No one who has not
tried it, has any idea of the difficulty of illuminating such a
black passage, by even several candles, sufficiently to perform
any delicate mechanical operation; and good light is essential to
the safe-breaker.

In banks there is no better plan than has been here now adopted
of making the iron safe a great cube, with the door at one side,
placing the whole safe with its bottom resting upon the stem or
plunger of a hydraulic press, the cylinder of which is fixed in
the bottom of the pit in the solid earth, of a size capable of
enabling the whole safe to be bodily lowered down into the cavity
at the end of the day's work, and pumped up again out of its
hiding-place the next morning.

The lever of the hydraulic pump is taken away, and the socket
into which it fits is plugged, and the plug locked into its
place, and then the pump, situated in a recess in solid masonry,
is itself locked up. The top of the safe itself, when it has been
lowered to the bottom of its chamber, stands ten or twelve inches
below the floor-level of the stone floor, and a pair of iron
doors is then closed over it and locked down.

A safe executed in this way, though requiring a considerable

expenditure at first, if well done, might bid defiance to
anything almost, even unlimited gunpowder, for some days. The
only addition of safety that almost could be conceived would be
that adopted at the bullion vaults of the Bank of France in
Paris, where these, situated in casemates two stories under
ground, are only approachable by one narrow, winding staircase,
which can be itself, in case of emergency, rapidly rendered
useless, and the cylindrical well in which it is placed filled up
with about thirty feet in depth of water, which cannot be pumped
out until a continuous supply be shut off by distant means only
known to one or two trusted employee.

Since this revision has been in type the great "safes” contest
or wager of battle between the rival safes of Mr. Herring of New
York, and Mr. Chatwood of Bolton, for £600 a side, has come off,
3066 29/09/2006 2:58:38 PM
(c) 1999-2004 Marc Weber Tobias