The UNBREAKABLE CASE

In 1694, Thomas Neale established the first national lottery, called the Million Adventure Lottery. The lottery was extremely successful, and Neale earned around 10% of the total value of all tickets sold. To promote the Lottery, he created an extraordinary case to store the tickets, called the Unbreakable Case. Designed by an Italian artisan, it features 18 independent keys and locks, along with a mechanism within the case that would cause injury to anyone attempting to force it open. Remarkably, the case still exists in the national archive in Kew, London. As you might expect, I wanted to go and see the case and contacted the curator, but apparently, it’s too fragile to be put on display. Interestingly, a case that was designed to be unbreakable, so robust and strong that no one could break into it, is actually hidden from view, because someone simply looking at it might cause some damage? It reminded me of the final scenes in Raiders of the Lost Ark, where a vast warehouse is revealed, filled with the world’s most secret treasures stored in wooden boxes. The Unbreakable is just one of the many puzzles left by the extraordinary Thomas Neale.