Australian lock pioneers · Jacksons
Jacksons Locks has one of Australia’s most distinctive lockmaking stories: English industrial training, a government teaching appointment in Japan, a Launceston workshop, railway and bank work, prison use and a family business that traces its origin to 1883.
Francis Jackson’s training
According to the company’s history, Francis Jackson was born in Wolverhampton in 1851. He served an apprenticeship with B. Smith and later became a foreman at Chubb, placing his early career inside one of Britain’s most important lockmaking centres.
Teaching lockmaking in Japan
In 1879, Jackson was contracted by the Japanese Government to teach lockmaking and the manufacture of brass fittings in Tokyo. This was during Japan’s rapid Meiji-era industrial modernisation. His contract ended in December 1882.
Launceston, 1883
Jackson settled in Launceston, Tasmania, and his family arrived in 1883. He established a shop at 74 Charles Street. The business won railway orders for point locks and built a reputation through difficult practical work. The company history recounts Jackson opening the Beaconsfield Bank safe after a robbery and unsuccessful attempts by others.
Handmade cabinet locks, safe locks and padlocks earned exhibition recognition. Brass components were cast and filed by hand—a reminder that early local manufacture depended as much on fitting skill as on design.
Railways, banks and government
Jackson products served organisations that needed consistent key control and durable mechanisms. Railways used locks operationally rather than decoratively; banks and government buildings required confidence in both product and maker. Contemporary newspaper material preserved by Trove helps anchor the company in the public record.
The Maitland Gaol connection
A circa-1900 Jackson four-lever brass padlock is held in the Maitland Gaol collection. The gaol operated from 1848 to 1998, and its locks secured prisoners and controlled movement. The collection story even records occasions when prisoners turned the system against warders during searches.
This is sometimes loosely described as a “convict” connection. The accurate account is narrower: Jackson locks were used in a gaol. Francis Jackson was not a convict, and the company was founded decades after convict transportation to Tasmania ceased.
Later generations
Francis’s son Davis Sydney “Syd” Jackson entered the business in 1910 and later served in federal parliament. The company moved to a Ravenswood Road factory in 1966, restructured in 1991 and remains associated with the Scott family. Its survival gives Australia a rare thread from nineteenth-century hand manufacture into current lock production.
Read the broader Australian locksmithing history or return to the main timeline.