The history of safes

18th century

Before safes, people kept their valuables in locked wooden chests. The lack of security in this is illustrated by the tale of the crown jewels of Scotland, which were placed inside an oak chest in 1707 and secured with three locks. In 1818 the jewels had to be released by force in the presence of Royal Commissioners because “no keys could anywhere be found”.

By 1780: The use of cast iron became cheaper and therefore more widespread. It began to be used for making solid iron boxes.

1784: Joseph Bramah invented the “unpickable lock”, which kept its title for 67 years, until an American locksmith called Hobbs opened it at the Great Exhibition. It took him 51 hours, though.

19th century

By the 1800s: Safe-cracking techniques (called box jobs) were often used in bank robberies.

1801: Richard Scott took out a patent for the fire-proofing of “coffers” (chests for storing valuables), although he did not appear to use it.

1818: Jeremiah Chubb patented a “detector lock”. If someone tried to pick it or open it with the wrong key, a detector mechanism on the lock meant it would not work.

1820: Until around this time, safe boxes were only designed to protect against theft, not fire.

1834: William Marr patented his design in London, a safe box with an “improved inner fire-proof case within which any combustible property may be placed”.

1835: The Chubb brothers took out a patent on a burglar-resistant safe.

1838: Charles Chubb patented a simple invention: “two or three internal linings of iron plate to the receptacle, one lining within another, leaving narrow spaces between each lining, and filling up those spaces with some such slow conducting materials as will retard the transmission of heat”.

1840: Thomas Milner, a tinsmith originally from Sheffield, took out a patent which expanded on those before, making, “The introduction or application of the combined effect in chambered boxes or depositories of the materials kept humid in the space surrounding the innermost box and its contents, without in any way being confined to the materials or liquid employed”.

1843: Edward Tann, Edward Tann Junior and John Tann took out a patent for securing the presence of moisture with a chemical salt, which Thomas Milner considered to be an infringement of his 1840 patent.

It was around this time that the name “safe” came into being, describing these new fireproof cabinets.

1846: Thomas Milner began manufacturing strong plate iron safes and chests.

1847: The diagonal bolt system for locks was introduced by the Chubb brothers. This would later be applied to safes.

1850: Drill protection was used around the locks of safes, from about this time.

1851: Silas C. Herring exhibited his “Fire-Proof Safe” at the Great Exhibition at Crystal Palace.

In the same year, an action before a special jury in the Queen’s Bench upheld Thomas Milner’s claim that his patent had been copied.

1855: A safemaker called George Price was getting ready to auction his latest range of safes in Manchester, when a horse-drawn lorry stopped outside his premises. On the lorry sat one of Thomas Milner’s “Strong Holdfast Safes” in perfect condition, alongside one of Price’s safes, which had been mangled. Milner proudly displayed Price’s dismembered safe in the window of his Manchester depot.

From this grew The Burnely Test: a series of public challenges for the testing of safes by both fire and human force.

1856: George Price published his Treatise on Fire and Thief-Proof Depositories and Locks and Keys, a 1000-page book which included many testimonials on fire tests. In it, he claimed that the results of fire tests carried out by his rival Thomas Milner were false.

1857: James Sargent invented a key-changeable combination lock, which became popular with safe manufacturers.

1860: George Price patented safes that had fully case-hardened doors and bodies.

1860-70: The opening of safes by steel “wedges” (that is, bending out the side of the safe to allow a crowbar to be pushed between the body and the edge of the door) became prominent, and safe manufacturers had to respond to this with stronger designs.

1865: The Great Jewel Robbery at Walkers’ Jewellers in Cornhill, London, took place. Afterwards, the safemakers received criticism from the police who attributed the theft to, amongst other things, “unexpected insecurity of the best iron safes”.

1866: The case of Walker v. Milner came to court. Mr Walker, the Cornhill jeweller, tried to sue Milner & Son, the safemakers, for breach of warranty. Although Walker was unsuccessful, the bad publicity surrounding the case prompted every safemaker in the country to improve his safes. So from February 1865 to March 1866, British safemakers took out a total of 36 new patents, all designed to strengthen the relationship between the body and door of their safes.

1867: The “Battle of the Safes” Safe-Breaking Contest took place at the Paris Exhibition, lasting five hours with a brief interval for refreshments.

1870: Josef Strauss was commissioned to write the Feuerfest Polka, in honour of the fire-testing events. Safes at this time were sometimes referred to as “Salamanders”, after the amphibian which is said in folklore to be able to survive a fire.

1873: Joseph Sargent patented the time-lock mechanism.

1890s: Steel became more widely available around this time, and at a lower price.

20th century

Advances in the production of steel meant a decrease in the popularity of safe cracking.

1900: By this time, a method had been perfected: to bend the outside walls of a safe from a single sheet of steel. This bending process, which could be used on steel up to 12mm thick, produced the rounded edges and corners that you see on safes even now.

1905: The box press was invented, allowing further developments in safe manufacturing.

1920: Electric-arc welding came into general use, allowing the back plate of a safe to be welded flush with its body.

1925: The first bank vault was tested.

1930s: By this time, when explosives were much more commonly used, nearly every well-made safe had what was called at the time “anti-blowpipe” protection.

1940s: During the war, nearly all safe production stopped as factories were forced to make munitions instead. Afterwards, when safe production resumed, it was found that the old 1930s designs did not stand up to the post-war increase in burglaries. Many former servicemen were now familiar with cutting torches and explosives from their fighting days, so the old-style safes provided easy pickings.

1945: The contents of a safe located 300m from the centre of the atomic blast at Hiroshima survived intact.

1950s: By this time, safe manufacturers had started fitting devices to protect against high explosives.

1962: Chubb introduced a new production method - TDR - which incorporated torch- and drill-resisting material.

1963: The new Stratford Safe Company made safes in which concrete played a big role. As with most other safe manufacturers, the designs of their fire-resistant safes were kept separate from their burglar-resisting safes.

1982: Dudley Safes Limited, the manufacturing arm of NeedASafe, was founded by brothers Mike and Jeff Macefield. It continues to the present day as a family run business.

1997: A Home Office report showed that attacks on banks decreased 46 per cent in 1994 and a further 19 per cent in 1995.

21st century

2004: Dudley Safes formed NeedASafe.com, so it can sell safes online.

Thank you to ...

The following websites were used in researching this timeline:

About.com - http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bllock.htm
The History of Locks - http://historyoflocks.com/GP04.html
Illegal Engineering - http://www.timhunkin.com/94_illegal_engineering.htm
Office Museum - http://www.officemuseum.com/filing_equipment_safes.htm
The Safeman - http://www.safeman.org.uk/
Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Where next?

Now you know all about safes, you can ...

* Browse NeedASafe’s range of fire safes
* Watch a video of our safes being tested
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