Premodern Lockpicking Did Not Require Much Skill
Here’s the problem: skill-based lockpicking with clever tools is really only necessary to subvert a specific kind of lock, which I will call a ‘modern pin tumbler lock’. It’s a tumbler with a stack of pins whose variable height at the shear line and rotating barrel mean that pins must be set to the exact height that the key is designed to lift them to. And it’s a kind of lock that was only invented, and entered use, in the late 1800s.
Earlier locks were of two main types. First, there were ancient pin-based locks, but their pins couldn’t be lifted ‘too high’. Even a well-designed one could be defeated easily by putting a bent rod or stick in the keyway and pushing all the pins up. (A poorly-designed one that didn’t protect the pins could be defeated in a single motion by putting anything in the keyway.) You could completely master subverting old pin locks in well under an hour, and you don’t need special tools for it.
The second type, and the best lock technology for thousands of years, was a warded lock. This has complex ‘wards’ (metal shapes) meant to prevent the wrong key turning in it. A warded lock can be defeated by a skeleton key (a filed-down regular key). Picking a warded lock therefore amounts to using a big bundle of ‘tryout keys’ and if they failed, trying various bent rods until one was the right shape to move the latch or bolt. Again, lockpicking before the advent of the modern pin tumbler doesn’t require much skill, so we have a pseudo-anachronism.
