FINANCIAL FORTRESSES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 75, 24 April 1909, Page 3

FINANCIAL FORTRESSES.

HOW BRAIXY BANKERS BEAT BURGLARS. Some four years ago a great London bank moved its premises from one side of the Strand to the other. Some millions of cash ami i-ecliritie-. with great chests full of valuables of all sorts, gold plate, and jewels, were carted across the busiest street in London in a private brougham and a few handcarts.

A few weeks ago a Xvw. York bank removed from its old quarters to now, and a hundred stalwart police guarded huge steel-clad waggons, which were protected from assault not only by armed men, but by a device for squirting scaldin" steam over any who attempted a raid.

But there were no Tottenham Anarchists present, and, though a great crowd assembled, many of them known crooks and criminals, none attempted an assault on the ponderous vehicles. Steam at high pressure is no novelty as a gold guardian. When the trampsteamer Arana sailed for the Philippines with £200,000 in silver in ),er hold, the captain received warning that pirates in the 'China Sea were planning to raid her. Part of her cargo was a dozen small, second-hand railway-engines. THE WATER-GUARD. The captain had a railway-track constructed all round the decks of his ship, anil as soon as he neared Chinese waters the engines were brought up, placed On the track, and fitted with fire-hose. Then steam was got up. A couple of big, ugly-looking junks did heave in sight, but the weird arrangement on the Arana's decks evidently frightened tliem. They sheered oil' in a hurrv.

Next to steam, water is. perhaps, tlr best of anti burglar inventions. The millions locked in the huge strong-room of the Bank of England are guarded by water. The foundation of the vaults, sixty-six feet below the level of the streets, is a bed of concrete twenty feet thick. Above the concrete is a lake seven feet deep; so that any gang of burglars who succeeded in boring through the concrete would inevitably lie drowned.

Ceilin« am) floor of tiro vasi vault? arc of hugely-thick iron plating, and above the coiling is another great tank and another twenty feet of cement. As for the door*, they are n foot thick, and weigh four tons oiu-h. They are made of n compound of flint and iron, which k absolutely iinpeiviou* to any drill. Some bankers depend on electricity as tin* champion watchdog. Every door and window in a certain well-known private bank in the Xorth (if England i« 'connected by night with electric wires, carrying a current powerful enough to paralyse anyone foolish enough to nnddle with them. SAFELY [MPHISOXED!

Not only that, but the merest touch is -uflkiiMit. to furn on electric lights all over the place, both inside and out. making such a glare as would bring every po'iuman running from half a mile round.

A Viennese jeweller boasts a gaff-vault in the floor of which are a number of hidden springs. Put your foot on any one of these, and—bang!—down goes a large section of the floor and drops the intruder into a pitch-dark cellar beneath, the trapdoor at the same time automatically closing.

Safe-makers admit that it is next to impossible to construct a safe which shall bo beyond th.' power, of the modern cracksman. Tlv the aid of eleotricitv, of the oxv-hvdrogen blowpipe, or of the compound known as "thermit." lie can bore his way through the finest armor-plate steel iu existence. Aware of this, a banker at Dresden, iu Saxony, has attached to the inside of the door of liis safe an apparatus containing potassium cyanide and sulphuric acid, and so constructed that the opening of the safe door permits the two choin icals to emit their deadly funics.—Home paper.