THE HISTORY OF SAFES IN THE UK

CHATWOOD SAFES

The Chatwood Safe Company began to manufacture safes in Bolton, Lancashire around 1855. The company was established by Samuel Chatwood, born in Liverpool in 1833. He became an agent for Simpsons Patent American Sewing Machines in 1859 and in March 1861 he announced he had engaged the services of William Dawes, Civil and Mechanical Engineer, who had previously managed the Coalbrookdale Ironworks in Shropshire, to begin manufacturing a range of one hundred and eleven safes. Chatwood soon earned a reputation for innovative and quality fire and security safes. Unfortunately his obvious talents as a manufacturer did not extend to his business administration and although his safes were well received, profits were hard to come by, resulting in the liquidation of the business on more than one occasion. Samuel Chatwood's business was passed onto his sons on his death in 1912. In 1924 plans were made to move the safe factory to Harlescott in Shrewsbury. Eventually in 1926 sufficient funds were raised and the company proceeded to thrive. In 1955 it was decided that The Chatwood Safe Co. and the Milners Safe Co. would amalgamate. Unfortunately the new company stumbled from one crisis to another until it went into voluntary liquidation in 1963 after which its assets and goodwill were acquired by Chubb Safes, who continued to operate Chatwood Milners Safe Co. as separate business until 1971 when it was fully integrated within the Chubb brand.

MILNER SAFES

Thomas Milner, who was bound in 1791 as an apprentice to his father in the trade of tinsmith and brazier for eleven years. In those eleven years he was not allowed to marry, take a drink or take a day off without permission. He was provided with meat, drink, washing, lodgings and wearing apparel. His wage was sixteen pence a year. He learned well and began to manufacture iron coffers and strong boxes. In 1824 he secured orders for these from the Duke of Wellington as well as an official contract to supply the War Office. Thomas moved in 1830 from Sheffield to Liverpool and set up the firm of Thomas Milner and Son, where he was a pioneer in the development of fire resistant safes and much involved in taking out patents and demonstrating the excellence of his safes by placing them in the centre of huge bonfires.

PHOENIX SAFES

Phoenix Safe Co are leading manufacturers of fire and burglary resistant safes, files and cabinets and have been trading in Liverpool since 1799. With the advent of new technology, the company evolved in the 19th century, in competition with Jeremiah Chubb, Linus Yale, Josiah Brannah Milner, Hobbs and Tanns; from their early days of manufacturing wooden seaman’s chests and strongboxes for the merchant fleets sailing to America, they began to design, patent and manufacture steel strongboxes and security safes with complex locking systems. Phoenix Safes now enjoy an outstanding reputation and distributes throughout the UK and worldwide.

HOBBS SAFES

It is probably true to say that no single person had as much impact on the British lock trade as Alfred Charles Hobbs. He arrived in England around the time of the Great Exhibition of 1851 as the salesman for Day & Newell of New York. He was already an accomplished picker of locks, a technique he frequently employed as a sales tactic. He set to discredit the two most famous and respected locks of the day, the Bramah lock and the Chubb detector lock. The process of this picking and the huge controversy was avidly followed in the press at the time and has been the subject of much discussion since. By picking the Chubb detector lock and the Bramah lock he forced change and improvements on the manufacturers, He also championed the extensive use of machines for the manufacture of locks rather than the traditional hand made locks. Shortly after the exhibition he established his own factory, first making locks for other manufacturers notably Milner and eventually became one of the major lock and safe manufacturers. Hobbs left England and returned to the USA around 1862 and the firm was run by Thomas Hart, although it continued to bear his name until it was bought by Chubb Safes in the 1960's.

BRAMAH LOCKS

Joseph Bramah patented his lock in 1784, it can be said that it was a milestone in the development of security locks. He had recognized the inherent weaknesses of previous locks and designed a lock which, he believed had none of the previous weaknesses. His patent lock is a masterpiece, with 18 sliders offering over 479 million key differs. This lock still exists and is still owned by the Bramah lock company in London.The first recorded picking of the Bramah lock was not at the time of the Great Exhibition of 1851, but some 30 years before in 1817 when an advertisement appeared offering an opening service to owners of locks who had lost their keys. An employee of Bramah's named Russell came up with a solution, he invented the false notches on the slides to frustrate the tentative process of picking to which the original locks were vulnerable. The major upset for Bramah's reputation for impregnability came in 1851 when the famous American locksmith and lock - picker succeeded in picking the Bramah challenge padlock. It is worth noting that the lock was nearly 50 years old at the time, and certainly not the most up to date design. The process still took him some 45 hours, spread over 16 days. Bramah locks are still made today, indeed Bramah's are the oldest constantly trading lock company in the world. The mechanism was widely copied, particularly in Europe. A number of variations also appeared, with varying degrees of success, but none of the copies have stood the test of time - only the original. From around 1890 - 1920 Bramah's clients were some of the wealthiest people in the world, and for such customers Bramah supplied jewel case and master keys in gold.

CHUBB SAFES AND LOCKS

Charles Chubb, born in 1779, British inventor and entrepreneur, and founder of the locksmith firm of Chubb & Son (now Chubb & Son PLC), which in the 20th century became a major corporation manufacturing and distributing locks, safes, alarms, fire extinguishers, security systems, surveillance equipment, and other products. His brother Jeremiah patented a detector lock in 1818, which proved to be the foundation of the later success of the firm of Chubb & Sons which Charles founded when he moved to London in 1820. Charles Chubb made improvements on this lock, with patents in 1824, 1828, and 1833. He also took out several patents for fireproof and burglarproof safes. Eventually, his factories produced nearly 1,500,000 patent locks and about 30,000 safes and strongrooms. On 10th August 2000, Gunnebo AB of Sweden acquired Chubb Safes. Chubb Safes was consolidated within a group consisting of other famous names such as Churchill Safes, Rosengrens Tann, Fichet-Bauche (France) and Garny Sicherheitstechnik (Germany). In the UK Chubbsafes are now a division of Gunnebo Security UK Ltd.- www.gunnebosecurity.co.uk

Some information is used with the kind permission of antique-locks.com