On Mon, 19 Nov 2007 04:53:49 -0800 (PST),
wrote:

A friend locked herself out of her flat this weekend.
I offered to come round and use my size 11 skeleton keys on it :-) but
she called a locksmith instead.

The lock was a single yale-type lock which locks when the door is
pulled closed.
My question is - how would a locksmith open this?

A pal of mine who used to repair council-house doors once showed me.
Get the claw of a claw-hammer under the edge of the cylinder (the
softish escutcheon makes this easy really), then tear out the
cylinder. The fixing screw heads will pull through the back-plate.
Then you can insert a screwdriver into the slot in the lock and easily
open the door.
Does anybody still use Yale-type locks? Insurance companies don't
recognise them as secure nowadays.

--
Frank Erskine