[Victorian Web Home —> Douglas Jerrold —> Illustration —> Charles Keene —> Next]

Passage Illustrated

A respectable thing, that, for a married man to carry about with him, — a street-door key! That tells a tale I think. A nice thing for the father of a family! A key! What, to let yourself in and out when you please! To come in, like a thief in the middle of the night, instead of knocking at the door like a decent person! Oh, don't tell me that you only want to prevent me sitting up, —; if I choose to sit up what's that to you? Some wives, indeed, would make a noise about sitting up,but you've no reason to complain, —; goodness knows!

Well, upon my word, I've lived to hear something. Carry the street-door key about with you! I've heard of such things with young good-for-nothing bachelors, with nobody to care what became of 'em; but for a married man to leave his wife and children in a house with a door upon the latch —; don't talk to me about Chubb, it's all the same —; a great deal you must care for us. ["The Twelfth Lecture. —; Mr. Caudle having come home a little late, declares that henceforth 'He will have a key'," p. 58]

Commentary: Mr. Caudle hopes a Chubb lock will enable him to stay out later

Job Caudle attempts to allay his wife's fears about security of the house by proposing that they have a Chubb lock installed; despite the impeccable reputation of the Chubb Detector lock, patented to ironworker Jeremiah Chubb in February 1818, Margaret Caudle is not satisfied. Although the Chubb Detector was tamper-proof, Margaret Caudle's principal (albeit unspoken) concern is probably not the security of the house so much as her having husband home by midnight, and firmly under control. To her, then, the latch-key represents the freedom of bachelorhood.

That the frontispiece foreshadows this particular​ lecture suggests that the twelfth lecture is representative of the thirty lectures that Mrs. Caudle delivers to her husband at bed-time. She has emasculated him by forbidding him his own latchkey, which thus becomes a symbol of power and authority. Without his own key, he cannot stay out past midnight since he will need a servant or his wife to let him in. Jeremiah Chubb replaced the conventional latch with his "Detector" Lock, starting in 1818: "Whatever valuables lay beyond the lock were guaranteed to remain safe and secure, immune to even the most sophisticated or skilled attempts at a breach" (Rossen, 2017). Here, Mrs. Caudle turns to challenge her husband about installing a Chubb lock as she lights their way upstairs to their bedroom. The candle sharply illuminates her shoulder and the wall before her, but throws the rest of the picture into chairoscuro, suggesting the lateness of the hour. Margaret Caudle likes to be in control of her husband's movements, and even takes charge of the couple's progress up the stairs.

Twenty-five-year-old artisan Jeremiah Chubb patented his fool-proof tumbler design; his older brother, Charles (1772-1846), a Portsmouth ironmonger and chandler, took charge of production and distribution, so that by the mid-1840s the Chubb Detector had acquired the reputation of being the most secure and reliable lock in the world. The firm provided two such locks priced at 6 guineas each for the Bank of England, and four locks and a new key for the Duke of Wellington's London residence, Apsley House. Jeremiah Chubb replaced the conventional latch with his "Detector" Lock, starting in 1818: "Whatever valuables lay beyond the lock were guaranteed to remain safe and secure, immune to even the most sophisticated or skilled attempts at a breach" (Rossen, 2017). The firm, as illustrator Charles Keene would have known, designed a security cage in which to display the Koh-i-Noor diamond at the Great Exhibition of 1851. Building on earlier work by Robert Barron and Joseph Bramah, the Chubb brothers developed what they termed the "Detector," a four-lever lock that, when picked or opened with the wrong key, would no longer work until a locksmith had reset it with a special key. In other words, if the owner could not open the lock with the proper key, then the tumblers had been disturbed by a housebreaker, whose furtive visit the lock itself announced, detecting some form of tampering. This security feature, which was known as a "regulator," was tripped when an individual lever was pushed past the position required to bring the lever in line to open the lock. As a result of this innovation, Jeremiah Chubb was able to claim the £100 reward offered by the British government.

The Chubb lock appears in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Skerlock Holmes short story "A Scandal in Bohemia" —; the cunning Irene Adler has had such a lock installed on the front door of her London villa. In Doyle's "The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez," Holmes learns from the elderly maid, Mrs. Marker, that the key is not the old-fashioned type, but a modern "Chubb's key." In both Holmes stories, the point that Doyle is making is that the lock could not have been picked, and that therefore the thief must have had a key.

Bibliography

"A Brief History of Chubb 1818 - 1990s." The Chubb Archive.​ http://www.chubbarchive.co.uk/page5.html

Jerrold, Douglas. Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures, as Suffered by the late Job Caudle.​Edited from the Original MSS. by Douglas Jerrold. With a frontispiece by Leech, and as motto on the title-page, "Then, Pistol, lay thy head in Fury's lap. —; Shakespeare."​ London: Punch​ Office; Bradbury​ and Evans,​ 1846.

Jerrold, Douglas. Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures . Illustrated by John Leach and Richard Doyle. London: Bradbury and Evans, 1856.

Jerrold, Douglas. Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures. Illustrated by Charles Keene. London: Bradbury and Evans, 1866.

Rossen, Jake."History: The Man Who Picked Victorian London's Unpickable Lock." Mental Floss. 3 August 2017. http://mentalfloss.com/article/501820/man-who-picked-victorian-londons-unpickable-lock

---

Victorian
Web

Visual
Arts

Illus-
tration

Charles
Keene

Next

Last modified 17 November 2017