Word: locke
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...East Orange, N. J., Joseph Wooten yawned mightily, dislocated his jaw, was taken to a hospital. While an attendant was leading him down a corridor, Joseph Wooten felt his jaw lock. Frightened, frantic, he jumped out a window, killed himself...
When cocky Locksmith Charles Courtney of Manhattan, founder-president of the American Association of Master Locksmiths, sailed last month for Europe, he said he was off to pick a lock, where or for whom he did not know. Observers guessed it might be a rusted lock on a treasure chest hauled from the sunken Egypt by the Italian salvage ship Artiglio II (TIME, June 20). Never having met the lock that could resist him, Master Courtney, who first learned his trade at the door of his mother's jam closet, expected no trouble. Last week, back in Manhattan...
...Bremen. There an engineer from the Artiglio II gave him minute descriptions of two safes to be opened by divers 400 ft. below the surface. A third had been opened with an acetylene torch, damaging the contents. Courtney gave the engineer a "template" (outline pattern) of what the lock probably was like, where it should be drilled. His templates opened one safe, failed on the other until he had flown to Calais and drawn another. His employers told him to come back in August when there would be more locks to pick. Then Locksmith Courtney had another adventure. From Bremen...
...wanted to be a crook I could make plenty of cash," declared he to the Press. "None of the crooks in this country knows how to do these things. It took me 20 years to learn what I know about locks. No crook is going to take that trouble. It was different in the old days. [He is in his 40's.] There wasn't so much to know then. Even a child could learn how to pick a warder lock." He learned to pick, and later make, locks by stealing into his mother's jam closet...
...Warder lock, which Master Courtney scorns, consists essentially of a solid bolt with a notch or peg on its stem. The key engages the notch or peg and thus slides the bolt to or fro. Almost anything which can pass through the keyhole can throw this simple lock. To impede such easy passage a trifle, locksmiths sometimes notch the keyhole. Ordinarily only keys with grooved bits which fit the notches can get through such keyholes...