chubbbramah wrote The story of the unauthorised request to a Wolverhampton locksmith for a duplicate key in 1815 is given in PRICE pp337-338. He was paid 20 guineas (read pounds) for reporting this request, but declined the offer of a further £100 reward for naming the customer!! That would have been equivalent to about 2 years wages.
This story would be worth further exploration, though sadly that is now difficult.
‘Somebody’ sought an unauthorised key to a government despatch box during the Napoleonic War, and thought he could trust a Wolverhampton locksmith to provide it. Was the customer a spy? The locksmith reported the request, but declined to identify the customer … why? The reward he turned down was surely very attractive. Two years’ pay, presumably free of the recently introduced income tax (intoduced as a ‘temporary tax’ to pay for the war), yet it did not loosen his toungue. Was the customer a friend or relative, perhaps?
It brings to mind another spy with a key to a government despatch box, which might be unfamiliar to some readers here.
In 1943, the Turkish manservant to the British Ambassador to Turkey made a duplicate key to the Ambassador’s despatch box. Whilst the Ambassador relaxed in his bath, the manservant was photographing his secret papers, and selling the photos to the German spy chief in Ankara. Britain was attempting to persuade Turkey to come off the fence and side with the Allies. To strengthen his negotiations, the Ambassador was able to tell the Turks about the Allies’ forthcoming invasion of France due early next year, which would lead to the defeat of Germany. German intelligence thought this information worth paying highly to have.
The technical details are slightly vague - and the British government long denied it ever happened. British intelligence found the spy’s photos in Berlin at the end of the war, and both the spy and his German spymaster in Ankara later published their stories.
From the sometimes conflicting accounts, the manservant had previously worked as a locksmith in a car factory. He might have had spy training in an earlier employment at the German embassy. He made a key to the Chubb lock of a despatch box; he possibly also made a key to a Chubb safe in the residence. These were made from impressions in wax or clay.
The spy actually told the Germans nothing they did not already know or guess - except the invasion codename OVERLORD. Not the date or landing place. However, British codebreakers quickly spotted the activity of the spy, and were able to use it to break, at long last, a difficult German diplomatic code.
After letting the spy run for some months, the British began a show of hunting him - in the Embassy, where he was not to be found. Late in the year, invasion planning had advanced to the point where the Ambassador might reveal to Turkey (and Germany) something important, so it was time to close down the spy. He took the opportunity to run before the net could close.
Everybody reckoned it a success. German belief in an Allied invasion straight into Calais had been supported; Turkey lost confidence in Germany (though without actually joining the Allies); German Foreign Office intelligence had a success (one up on Militiary Intelligence); and the spy walked away with hundreds of £. Only later, did he find Germay had paid him in forged notes!
He did recoup some of his loss, after the war, by publishing a book about his story - helped by British Intelligence, keen to see he didn’t say too much. [Of course British Intelligence didn’t help him - the official line was still that the spy never happened, so they could not admit to having helped him.]
Significantly, after WW2 the British government embraced combination locks for safes - and especially keysafes - with much more enthusiasm than most commercial and private customers, who continued to prefer key locks. Even in departments with no secrets, keysafes were fitted with comlocks.
Britain had a brief attempt to introduce despatch boxes containg a laptop computer - but they were quietly dumped by Blair’s incoming Labour Government. And a last btw - the red boxes in the TV comedy Yes Minister, although looking nearly authentic, were props with dummy 2-lever locks, all keyed alike.
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