Bank vaults had peepholes

The article in last week’s Echo regarding safes, and bank vaults reminded me of probably a little-known safeguard for bank vaults. Most bank buildings had a peephole above the vault door which could be seen from an apartment on the second floor where one of the senior bank employees was required to live. If they heard a noise, they could quietly look to see if an intruder was attempting to break in and call the police. In Creemore, both the former Bank of Toronto building, now the Bank Cafe and the Bank of Montreal, now Victorian Values had this setup.
As mentioned in last week’s edition, before there was a bank in Creemore, the Hisey Brothers were doing a booming business buying livestock and grain. As the farmers could not cash a cheque locally, they had to be paid in cash. To keep this cash secure, Hisey’s built a pay office at 176 Mill Street now the 100 Mile Store, complete with a walk-in vault. This building also has a second-storey bedroom at the front, which was occupied at night by one of Hiseys’ employees. From here the employee could look through a port in the west wall, down an outdoor pipe, then back through the roof to see if anyone was at the vault door. The previously mentioned Hisey safe, where the cash was kept would have been kept in the vault. Bank records would just be kept inside the vault.
More modern safes usually had a time clock mechanism that prevented anyone from opening it until the clock had turned off at a set time, usually 9 a.m. the next business day or perhaps during parts of the day. Most of them also had two combinations locks, with the numbers only known by two different sets of people.
I worked for the Bank of Toronto, now TD Canada Trust from 1949 to 1954 at several branches including the Gananoque, Ontario branch where my late wife Doreen and I lived in an apartment upstairs. In the middle of the hardwood living room floor, there was one short piece of flooring that had been neatly cut to be removable. This exposed a short metal lined chute to the ceiling below. At the bottom, there was a piece of ceiling material connected to a wire, which could be quietly pulled up to expose a view of the vault door. I wasn’t required to watch it, but it was a conversation piece with visiting friends.

Gerry Blackburn,

Creemore.