crack a crib

English

(idiomatic, criminal slang, dated) To break into a house.
- 1891, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Red-Headed League:
  He'll crack a crib in Scotland one week, and be raising money to build an orphanage in Cornwall the next.
- 1942: Here in Macedonia I learned that honey is not so successful as one believes, that no bee ever realizes its full intention, and that the perfumer is a clumsy bungler who never cracks the fragile crib he covets, by approaching a town built in the Turkish manner, with a multitude of little gardens, at a time when the sun had been working for many hours on the acacia trees. — Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (Canongate 2006, p. 795)

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