Crack A Crib Meaning

(idiomatic, criminal slang, dated) To break into a house.

Example: 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)