I bet many of our younger readers have never heard of Peter Men, but that is not unusual with today's system of handling money, especially wages being paid straight into the bank and, oh yes, there is always payment by the plastic card with no cash changing hands.
But back in the 1950s it was a different matter. Many people, whether shops or offices, held large sums of money overnight in safes, it wasn't unusual to safely tuck away the weekly wages in the safe ready for paying out the following day.
But, of course, it wasn't very safe when the Peter Man was around. The Peter Man was another name for a safe cracker, a man who could handle safe's, and back in the 1950s, the most popular ways for thieves to open saves was to either simply blast them open or cut them open with an acetylene cutter.
Yes, some of these Peter Men were proud of their work and took great care to carefully blow the door open without creating too much damage (especially to what was inside), while others nearly blew themselves up along with the safe. It was becoming so regular that some Tyneside police officers believed that a then well-known Tyneside safe expert was running a school for safe-breakers.
It was said that with £5 in your pocket and knowing where to go, you could easily get enough gelignite to blow a safe within a few minutes' bus ride of Newcastle Haymarket.
Of course, explosives were used extensively in pits and quarries, and sometimes it was found that shipments of supplies never turned up on site being sold or stolen mid-journey.
The following is a small sample of Evening Chronicle stories from 1958 and 1959.
HEADLINE: Safe raiders lucky to escape alive
STORY: Thieves who broke into a garage at Benton got away with a very little safe and with their lives. But they were lucky.
It turned out they had tried to crack' a bigger safe in which there were seven pounds of gelignite already inside. "If they had hit the right spot they wouldn't have been alive today," said the company's MD. Thieves had broken into the Quarry Garage at Benton and then moved a 7ft safe into the middle of the room and began cutting it open with an acetylene torch. Luckily for the thieves they had not got very far when the ran out of oxygen.
They had to give up on the big safe but made off with a small safe, containing old books, a bottle of whisky and a bottle of gin I bet they were pleased!
Then an attempt at safe-blowing. In Newcastle's Clayton Street West raiders struck in an audacious attempt to blow open the strongroom in Martins Bank.
It was believed to be the first raid on a bank strongroom and it failed so the raiders went next door and ripped the back off a safe in a commission agent's office and got away with £5.
HEADLINE: Safe gang try again.
STORY: Safe-breakers have returned to Newcastle. Yesterday they tried unsuccessfully to open a safe, and then went on to blow a strongroom.
One dawn morning, in 1959, residents on Elswick Road were rudely awoken by shattering explosion heard a mile away from its source.
Raiders had tried to blow open the strongroom of the Woodbine Laundry. Policemen raced to the scene but the raiders had already left by car.
In the laundry office the raiders set up electrical detonating gear and tried to blow the safe open. They failed, and turned their attention to a concrete strongroom.
This was one of the biggest blows' in recent safe-breakings so big that the operators may have taken cover 20 yards away. The haul just £70 in insurance stamps. Next came the use of new technology.
HEADLINE: Gang blow up safe by telephone.
STORY: A new method of safe-blowing has been used by the gang operating on Tyneside. They have blown a safe at Wallsend by telephone.
In fact, police believed that the safe-blowers were using new gimmicks, trying to throw police off the scent. In fact they used different methods in a spate of raids at Benton, Wallsend, Carlisle and Newcastle.
In fact the Wallsend safe-blowing at Hadrian Road works of Carville Engineering Co netted them only £5 in silver. Then the gang moved on to Dunston and another firm, but this time their reward was nil.
HEADLINE: Clothes muffle the blast at office.
STORY: Yesterday it was discovered that the gang blew open a safe at T M Hartley's saw mills in Ullswater Road, in Penrith. This was just a fortnight after a previous raid in Penrith.
Following this safe-blowers struck back in Newcastle, this time getting away with £300.
They had just blown open a safe in Benfield Road Post Office when they were disturbed by police and fled.
HEADLINE: Safe gang nets £3,000 at City Post Office
STORY: A safe-blowing gang got away with a £3,000 haul from the New Bridge Street, Newcastle sub-post office, during the night the second post office raid in three days.
The gang also stole stamps and postal orders. Soon the craft of the Peter Men was improving.
HEADLINE: 2 City safes
STORY: An expert gang of safe-blowers blasted open two safes in the name of premises in Newcastle during the night. And they didn't disturb the caretaker and his family on an upper floor. They muffled the explosions by placing mattresses, carpets and eiderdowns around the safes. "It was a neat clean job", said a police spokesman.
HEADLINE: City safe blower £1,000 stolen.
STORY: About £1,000 is thought to have been stolen by thieves who blew open a safe in an ice cream factory in Benton Road, Newcastle.
HEADLINE: Safe-blower gets £200 from club
STORY: A safe-blowers took more than £200 from the fireproof, burglar-resisting safe at the Comrades Club, Whitley Bay. In fact although they got away with £200 they left hundreds of pounds of stock beers, spirits and wine. "We are mystified. There was absolutely no damage to anything except the safe and I understand there is hardly any clues to the identity of the thief."
Seaton Delaval was another target.
HEADLINE: Big safe gang out
STORY: A well-organised gang of safe-breakers is working in East Northumberland and has made several successful raids. The men use gelignite to blow open the safes, But they are said by police to be amateurs' in the use of explosives. Blyth CID is investigating the gang's latest coup in which Holywell branch of Seaton Delaval Industrial and Provident Society was broken into and the safe door blown open.
The Peter Men's reward was £90 and 300 cigarettes. The battle between police and Peter Men went on, explosives went missing and police picked up what they thought to be the "Brains behind safe blowings" and, finally, over the years, the raids Petered' out.
Now thieves raid you online, or at the bank's hole in the wall' money distributors but if there is a safe to open, they now just threaten staff to force them to open up, no need for the skill of the Peter Men'.
Things usually went with a bang...
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