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Date updated: 3/10/2023

The security firm of Chubb and Son, established in 1818 by two blacksmith brothers and now synonymous with locks, donated its archive to Guildhall Library in 1999. This large and immensely rich archive is currently the focus of a research project on the history of the security industry, led by David Churchill at the University of Leeds and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Miranda Clow, the project researcher, spent half her week over the course of six months in creating a comprehensive survey and list of the uncatalogued material in the Chubb collection. Here Miranda talks about her work on the Chubb archive and her experiences working at LMA. Also check out details at the end of Miranda’s article of events to celebrate the project in June and July.

Introduction

I first came across LMA when I was doing an MA in the History of Design. I became unexpectedly interested in fire insurance, and I learnt that the Royal and Sun Alliance collection (CLC/B/192) offered a lifetime’s research into that industry’s history in LMA’s convenient and comfortable setting.

In my research on fire insurance, amid the buckets and firemarks that represent that industry, one object intrigued me: the iron chest that inaugurated a fire office, as documented in its minutes. In this the insurers stored their company’s foundational documents, policy books and cash. There were rituals associated with its unlocking and locking. In 1713 the Sun Fire Office’s chest was painted with its name and sign. A fire office provided businesses and individuals with security against fire. But its own security rested on the papers in its strong-box.

Almost a decade on from my first steps into LMA, I seized the opportunity to work behind the scenes there as part of a research project on the history of the security industry, led by David Churchill at the University of Leeds and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Since the nineteenth century an entire industry, the security industry, has grown up around making repositories like the Sun’s chest secure against theft and fire.

Front cover of the Chatwood Safe Company Ltd Ashes leaflet
Chatwood Safe Co. Ltd, ‘Ashes’ leaflet. Ref: Chubb 1999-007, Box 212-003

Over the course of six months I have spent half my week creating a comprehensive survey and listing of uncatalogued material in the Chubb and Son collection. Chubb was established in 1818 by two blacksmith brothers with a patent for a new lock. Still today its brand is associated with locks. But in the course of its history it diversified into safes, vaults and strong rooms, office equipment, alarms, fire-fighting equipment and guarding services. By the 1980s it was an international company selling the full range of security products and services for homes, businesses and institutions.

The significance of the security industry

Security is everywhere in today’s world. We see private guards at the supermarket; cameras see us in the high street. We are protected in our online lives by anti-malware systems and firewalls, and in our domestic lives by locks, alarms, video doorbells and the like.

Behind these features of everyday life lies a largely untold history of how security became something to be bought and sold. Over the past 200 years or so, a handful of specialist lock-making firms have morphed into a vast global security industry. Along the way it has changed how we think about crime, fire and other risks. It has also underpinned pivotal developments of modern society, including bureaucratic record-keeping, new accumulations of private wealth, the sanctity of the private home, the preservation of historic treasures and the circulation of paper currency.

The Chubb company encapsulated the security industry’s transition. Its archive came to Guildhall Library via the Business Archives Council over twenty years ago. Its extensive records, which begin in 1819 and end in the 1990s, provide rich documentation of Chubb’s history, the history of the many companies it acquired in the twentieth century, and the history of the security industry as a whole. Staff at Guildhall Library and latterly LMA catalogued the key series of the collection, which amounted to over one hundred linear metres. Since 2010 these records have been accessible to researchers. But a further seventy linear metres remained uncatalogued and hence inaccessible. My listing makes this material available to the public for the first time. It enriches an already distinctive collection.

The history of Chubb

The late eighteenth century saw an innovation in lock-making which brought about a step change in security. The warded locks of old – constructed with fixed guards or wards – were joined on the market by ‘tumbler’ or ‘lever’ locks. The latter’s multiple, moving guards better frustrated attempts at duplication and lock-picking. Chubb quickly made a name for itself among this new specialist breed, known as the brand-name patent locksmiths. It was founded and grew on the basis of patents, which it protected fiercely and promoted keenly.

Advertising card for Chubb’s safes, 1883
Advertising card for Chubb’s safes, 1883, from the Chubb Collectanea. Ref: CLC/B/002/10/01/027/034B

Chubb’s founding brothers Charles and Jeremiah were from Portsea, Hampshire. In 1827 Charles Chubb moved and opened a shop in London, at St Paul's Churchyard. In 1830 the business set up its works in Wolverhampton, the traditional centre of lockmaking. It maintained a foothold at changing addresses in London and Wolverhampton throughout its history. From 1846 it branded itself Chubb and Son, but variations on the Chubb name came and went, as did the names of its subsidiaries in the twentieth century. Starting in the late nineteenth century the company mobilised a network of agents and branches from South Africa to Japan. Members of the Chubb family remained at the company’s head until the 1980s.

Chubb began to manufacture safes in 1835 after the grant of a patent. Its business in safes that would protect against theft, fire and the weaknesses of staff, grew steadily. Safes themselves also grew. By the end of the nineteenth century, vaults and strong rooms constituted the most lucrative market for Chubb and its competitors, protecting the fortunes of business, finance and individuals around the world.

The Chubb and Son collection

LMA’s catalogued Chubb and Son collection contains the key series for Chubb and for Hobbs Hart, which it took over in the mid twentieth century. The catalogued collection also contains nuggets for subsidiaries the Chatwood Safe Company and Milners’ Safe Company (who themselves had become Chatwood-Milner by the time of their acquisition in the 1950s).

Amid the corporate, financial and administrative records that characterise business records, three aspects are noteworthy:

First are the lock and safe number and order books. In these, companies carefully recorded customers and suppliers and details of the locks, latches, bolts, boxes and chests that they sold. These books hold great interest for collectors and they prove useful for dating pieces of antique furniture which have these fittings.

Second, the security industry used industrial quantities of print to promote itself from the 1850s, producing catalogues and advertising extensively in newspapers; some of this is preserved and catalogued, particularly in the Hobbs Hart series. In the 1920s Chubb extended its promotional capacities and its interests in technology to the medium of film. In the first instance it recorded its manufacturing processes and tests and presented the footage to audiences at its works. Its enthusiasm for moving image continued throughout the twentieth century, manifested in advertisements, anniversary films, safety films for hire and slots on television programmes such as the BBC’s Panorama.

But third, the gem in the collection, is the ‘Collectanea’ (CLC/B/002/10/01). Collectanea was the name Chubb gave to its series of scrapbooks in which were pasted correspondence, drawings, sales reports, advertisements and news articles, in relation to the company and the wider safe and then security industries. The Collectanea began as a typically Victorian endeavour; unusually, it continued into the 1980s. The resulting 110 volumes are a bulky demonstration of Chubb’s awareness of its susceptibility to current events and the business necessity of learning from them, as well as of its self-conscious preservation of its past. In a remarkable feat, a team of volunteers at LMA catalogued the volumes up to the 1960s in such detail that every individual item pasted in has a unique reference and description on the catalogue. The series provides researchers with a fascinating window into the developing lock, safe and security industry and how it was regarded by the wider public.

Behind the scenes at LMA

My time at LMA was under the wing of Laura Taylor, the senior archivist for business collections, and I received training and supervision from experienced cataloguer Katie Rawson. They settled me at a desk and I immediately borrowed a blue archivist’s workcoat to help me perform my new role more convincingly. My station was in the large, light Darlington Room where the Collections team sit. The mood of concentration in the room was broken alternately by eruptions of laughter and serious discussion.

Still, the task at hand was daunting: the number of uncatalogued boxes was estimated at 500. A formidable spreadsheet represented what was believed to be in the boxes but, with various moves and re-boxing that had taken place before the material arrived at LMA, it had become impossible to match spreadsheet rows to actual boxes. Katie set out the basic archival principles for me. I took in the lingo of hierarchies, series and files. The contents of the boxes required a series number, a title, a date and an extent. These were the essential headings on the blank spreadsheet I began to fill in. I worked in trolley-loads of boxes, replenished once or twice a week. I got a taste for the archivist’s rituals: shutting away the documents safely every evening. With time I realised the usefulness of ‘in relation to’, ‘includes’ and ‘etc’, and I would become acutely frustrated when a file failed to offer up a date.

Although the material could be similar, listing differed markedly from my experience of consulting insurance records as a researcher. The Chubb boxes had lost any sequence from one to the next; their contents often spoke of haste and disorder. This could be disorientating. But the boxes went back to the shelves with some order and some satisfaction on my part. In another difference from my past experience, with my archivist’s coat on I had to quieten my curiosity in order to focus on categorising a volume, a bundle of papers, a mound of booklets etc. But there were some dossiers, volumes and photograph albums I couldn’t resist spending time with. The greatest challenge in all this was consistency. Was it ‘printed matter’, ‘sales records’ or ‘staff records’? I equivocated from one week to the next.

366 boxes, and 2200 spreadsheet rows later, the task is complete.

The newly listed records

A large proportion of the 366 boxes concern Chubb’s subsidiaries. These usefully reflect the Chubb business beyond locks and safes. Copious marketing brochures and leaflets shed light on divisions dealing in alarms, guarding services and early computer security. There is much here for those interested in the development of fire safety equipment in the twentieth century, in the varied records of Pyrene, Minimax and Chubb Fire. Financial records and marketing material especially document international operations in North America, South Africa and Australia.

But the highlight of what I saw was a hefty scrapbook of fliers and leaflets for suppliers across the country, likely maintained by the works. The contents are loudly branded and illustrated, pasted in layers on the pages, and indexed. The volume visually represents Chubb’s position in a wider context of British manufacturing in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Scrapbook of suppliers leaflets for Chubb, dated 1868-1900
Scrapbook of suppliers’ leaflets, 1868–1900. Ref: Chubb 1999/007, Box 175

Producing the listing has been a fulfilling task. I am proud that my work will be placed on record at LMA and produced to aid future researchers. Thank you to Katie Rawson and Laura Taylor for their help and expertise, and to the rest of the Collections team and everyone else I’ve encountered at LMA for their assistance and enthusiasm.

To consult the listing of this uncatalogued portion of the Chubb and Son collection, please contact LMA.

Related events

Highlights from across the Chubb and Son collection will be on display in the document viewing event at LMA on Friday 8 July. On Wednesday 8 June, LMA’s book club will discuss the James Bond novel Goldfinger, in dialogue with archival material relating to high, international security and bank vaults. On Wednesday 22 June, LMA will host a film event, showing a selection of Chubb’s output.

Sources

  • ­­Chubb and Son Limited archive collection (LMA reference CLC/B/002)
  • ­­Security Heritage Hub
  • David Churchill, ‘The Spectacle of Security: Lock-Picking Competitions and the Security Industry in Mid-Victorian Britain’, History Workshop Journal 80 (2015), pp. 52–74.