Chubb & Sons

Chubb & Sons – was a firm set up by Charles Chubb in 1804. It started out as a ship’s ironmongers in Winchester then moving to Portsmouth. In 1818 Charles moved the firm to Wolverhampton and was joined by his brother Jeremiah.

Jeremiah invented and patented a ‘detector lock’ which enabled the lock’s owner to detect if there had been an illicit attempt to open it. In 1823 they were awarded a special licence by George IV and then became the sole supplier of locks to His Majesties Prison Service and also the General Post Office.

They opened a safe company in the Old Kent Road in London in 1837 and became a household name during the 1840s. In 1851 they designed the special secure display case for the Koh-i-Noor diamond when it was shown at the Great Exhibition.

They subsequently went on to open subsidiaries in the United States and developed the electronically operated time mechanism lock that was fitted to vault and safe doors with no outside connections. In 1923 they manufactured the massive circular steel treasury door which weighed 20 tons – the first of its kind.