Breaking into a house through a window

Hey everyone,

I'm working on a historical novel which can be set anywhere from 1870 to 1890 for the purposes of getting this one scene right.

The MC has to break into a mansion. The MC can pick locks, but the owner of the mansion is security-conscious, so all the doors will be bolted on the inside. I don't see any way to open those from the outside without making some noise, so the MC will have to get in through a window (by breaking a pane so he can reach inside and undo the latch). All this happens at night, so he wouldn't be seen.

The thing is, I don't want to have him simply smashing a way through the window. I'd like him to do this with some skill which shows readers that he's an old hand at the game. However, what I've seen online about breaking windows quietly involved duct tape (cover the window with it, tap the glass, broken pieces stick to the tape), and I can't have duct tape in the 1800s. Could I use some other substance that's sticky? Liquid wax, maybe?

MaeZe said:

How about have him climb up to a window that isn't locked because it's not expected to need locking?

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That's possible, but I'd like him to do something that shows readers right away he has skills that weren't gained through honest work.

frimble3 said:

I suspect that this isn't the show of technical skill you want, but where is the set, and most importantly, what time of year?
If it's a mansion, the servant's rooms are likely up in the attics - if it's summer, likely someone up there has left a window open, in hopes of getting a breath of cooler air.

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The setting is a large country house in Victorian England. But this is the Christmas story I mentioned on another thread, so no one will have a window open, especially not at night.

Of course, your MC still has to scale the building, and get past the fitfully sleeping inhabitant of the room before trying to figure out where his target is located.

Or, cut or chisel into the window frame and pick out the putty?

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I'll go with this if there isn't any other way for him to get in, but I'd really like to have him do something a little faster and more dramatic.

ChaseJxyz said:

I was going to say use a glass cutter to cut a hole Like In The Movies but I found a video of someone doing that and turns out it doesn't work without still whacking it with a hammer at some point.

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So this is all happening at night. The MC is breaking into a room on the ground floor, and everyone is asleep upstairs. There's a thick velvet curtain on the other side of the window. The door of the room is closed.

Maybe the sound of the glass breaking wouldn't be so loud that it would wake anyone up. He could always wrap the head of the hammer in cloth to muffle the tap even more.

Is it possible that a window on a higher floor is left unlocked/open a crack because the home owner assumes no one can get up that high and your MC can get up there?

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I'm afraid not, because this is taking place in December. All the windows are shut tight.

I'll see if YouTube has any videos of people breaking windows, and if there's a way to do this quietly and discreetly.

Maryn said:

Although I do prefer he cleverly defeat a downstairs window with criminal cunning...

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Yes, I feel the same way. I also want to avoid any hint of "this is an intruder out for rape", so I don't want him creeping into a room where some housemaid is sleeping. Hence the breaking into a room downstairs instead.

waylander said:

Brown paper and treacle as recorded in 1909 in the annals of the Old Bailey https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?div=t19090719-70

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Thanks for the link! This suggestion is really interesting for one reason. The setup is that the MC is given the chance to leave his criminal life behind, and so he doesn't have any of the professional equipment or contacts he once used. But he scrounges together what he needs anyway. So the brown paper and treacle, which are ordinary things that might be found in any house of that time period, would be ideal for him.

I didn't know treacle was so sticky it would hold broken pieces of glass, though I could always make the treacle extra glutinous. Too bad he doesn't have a diamond-tipped glass cutter, but maybe a sharpened knife would work okay.

benbenberi said:

Remember in Oliver Twist, the housebreakers would use a young child to enter the house through an unsecured small window and let the rest of the gang in through the door. Maybe your burglar has a small child (or trained monkey) in his toolkit?

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This one made me smile, because part of the story is the MC developing a fatherly relationship with a little boy. But if he ever took leave of his senses to the point where he involved the child in his criminal activities, the child's mother would kill him.

Helix said:

I used to live in a Victorian house in London. It had double hung windows with a latch that rotated at right angles to prevent movement of either top or bottom window. IIRC the way to break in was to slide a knife between the frames and push the latch out of the way.

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I kind of envy you, actually living in a Victorian house. Some of us can only dream.

The latch idea is good. I'm going to use it later in the story, when he enters yet another house where the doors have been bolted. By then, he won't need to establish his credentials to readers, so he can open the window the simple way. Thanks for the idea!

Averhoes said:

I am thinking of other alternatives besides a window- would the house have a coal chute leading to the basement? Could the thief enter through a coal chute?

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That's doable, but probably won't work as well as entering through a window.

I should add that this is a romance novel, and after the MC breaks in, he gets what he's looking for, escapes from the house, and goes to wake the heroine up. That leads to an intimate moment. If he's dusty because of the coal chute, it's just not going to be very romantic unless the heroine starts boiling water in the middle of the night so he can have a bath first.

Could the thief enter the house the day before the burglary, cunningly disguised as a deliveryman or repairman of some sort, and deftly unlatch one window while no one is looking? Moving around a dark house at night is a challenge for any burglar so entering the house before the burglary on some pretext would also be a useful way to scout at least some rooms of the house, get an idea of the floor plan etc.

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This is a good idea, but the burglary is very much a spur-of-the-moment decision. Also, the MC is on a deadline. He doesn't know if he'll be around two days from now. If he wants what's in the mansion, he has to get it now. There's no time to scope out the place.

That's actually part of the fun of writing it. The MC doesn't know what to expect, and it's a huge challenge for him as a result.

Does the owner have dogs? Firearms? A clever burglar is going to want to know these details in advance, and have a plan to deal with both.

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Of course. I completely agree that it's an insane risk for him to decide that he's going to rob the mansion tonight, without knowing anything about the mansion's security in advance.

But he's the kind of person who takes dangerous risks, and he has reason to believe that the day after tomorrow, he's going to die anyway, no matter what he does. So he figures he might as well go out with a bang, and on top of that, the robbery is meant to benefit a woman whom he cares about.

Oh, and there is a dog in the house. But it's much more dramatic for the MC to find that out the hard way.

jclarkdawe said:

If the homeowner is going to up the game, you've got to assume he's going to up the game everywhere. Everybody knows that the easiest way to deal with security is to find the weak spot. So we have to assume that the homeowner has secured everything from the doors to the windows to the coal chutes.

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I'm glad you guys both mentioned the coal chute, because now the MC can mentally cross that off as an entrance route. Besides, I imagine if it was that easy, other people might also be helping themselves to the rich homeowner's coal.

So your bad guy needs to up the game himself. Personally, for the time period you're dealing with, I'd go for him making a copy of the house key, and getting in and replacing the iron deadbolt with a wood one. Or the simpler approach of bribing one of the staff to open the kitchen door for him. Very consistent for the time period to have a rich homeowner invest in security and screw over the help.

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I wish he had the time to make a copy, but unfortunately he doesn't. He decides to rob the house in the afternoon, and he does it that night. This is the first draft, so it's just possible I might have more time to play around with when revising, but it would be more time as in an extra day, and I'm not sure that would be enough time for the MC to steal the house key and get someone to make a copy (especially since he's staying in a village near the estate and he's a stranger to the area).

Bribing the staff is more workable, but he'd have to pay a lot for them to risk their own safety by letting a stranger into the house. And if he had that much money, he wouldn't need to break in, because his whole purpose in doing so is to get money for the heroine. It's also a risk to him to trust someone else to that extent, because for all he knows, whoever he bribes might take his money and lead him into a trap, or give his description to the constables.

I think I'd be okay with breaking a pane of the window. It's simple, it's relatively fast, and it doesn't require anyone else's help.

frimble3 said:

I would imagine winter would be ideal for this. He keeps the treacle pot or bottle under his shirt so it's warm and malleable, spreads in on the brown paper, applies to the glass. The sticky treacle glues itself to the glass, and, in the middle of winter, stiffens up - making a pretty good bond between glass and paper. A handy way to deal with the shards of glass, as well.
Clever!

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The whole thing gives me a MacGyver vibe. If MacGyver was an anti-hero in Victorian England.

I can't wait to write it.