This story is about a watchmaker.  It is not what any NAWCC member could possibly be envisioning about watchmakers while attending a chapter meeting. It is about what it took 65 years ago for a London watchmaker to survive and make a successful life while struggling to meet daily expenses, pay monthly bills, overcome debilitating health problems, and raise a family. (People ask me, “Could he actually make a watch?” The answer is yes—if given enough time.)

My father—James Devereux Watson—was born in 1894 in the borough of Islington in London. His early life as a “street-smart” boy included doing errands for folks for a penny, running behind horse carts with a bucket to collect the droppings for sale as manure, fetching his father’s penny-a-pint beer, and many other such things while also devoting much of his time to being a mischief-maker! His family was large and lived in a tenement. His father (born in 1859) was quite mean and sometimes violent, but I remember him best as a nice old man in a hospital bed.

In those days gentlemen wore gold pocket watches on gold chains, and pick-pocketing was common. A small device was built into the watch chain which, if the chain was jerked, expanded into three claws to grab the owner’s waistcoat (vest). You can romanticize those times as being the “Mary Poppins” era if you wish to dream, but the real life was hard and mean.

Father’s teenage years were spent working as an errand boy and doing odd jobs. Than he began attending BHI evening classes to learn the basics of the watchmaker’s trade. The school was located on St. John Street, Islington, and the general facility has since become the City College. Late at night, after he returned from classes, his father would shout at him to go to bed and he would have to creep back out and finish his homework by candlelight (gaslight was usually available if one had a shilling for the meter). Would a teenager work this hard today? For Father, the demanding regimen had its rewards, such as the class prize he won—a bound volume of Old Clocks and Watches by Britten.

 Father’s watchmaking training was interrupted by World War I—he joined the Army to get a good breakfast. He served as a staff-sergeant armorer and sustained partial gas exposure. Finally, at the end of 1918 peace returned, and with it the struggle to find employment.

He told me that when he was a journeyman/apprentice in an establishment on Connaught Street near Marble Arch, the owner used to say that Lord so and so had not asked for any repairs lately, so (since one of Father’s duties was to wind the clocks in the rich people’s houses) he was told to put the customer’s clock off-beat when winding it so that it would lose time. I suppose that his apprenticeship must have lasted for some five years before he was allowed to work at the bench on a timepiece. As I remember much later, he would never allow clocks on his bench because they were too dirty. He finally only worked with wristwatches, like Movado, Longines, Rolex, Omega, and Waltham . . . and I remember once a three-layer striking pocket watch. Also, ladies’ very small wristwatches with movements approximately one centimeter in diameter.

Father worked in a high-class repair establishment until around 1935, when failing health forced him to do his work in an alcove in the living room of our house in North London. Traveling on the Underground to the center of London, and the bad fogs, had gradually sapped his stamina, and now emphysema was present. Watching him, I learned about the stresses involved in watch repairing and in trying to support a family on work that is paid for by the piece, with no fixed salary.

Father had already established a contact with an expert small business repairer to the trade in our area. The work was hand-carried from the big houses like Mappin & Webb to North London, and Mother used to travel twice a week to the local house for collection and delivery. Generally we had around ten or 15 watches in the house at one time, and Father was expected to complete about ten watches or more per week. Each job was priced by the local house, and I used to keep the records for the income tax. All work had to be guaranteed for one year, and any returns had to be serviced by Father without additional pay. Of course there were always problem watches, but if your work originated from Mappin & Webb you were not in a position to argue and lose all work and income. It is well to remember that in this environment one could never leave work behind. Many times Father worked at the bench past midnight.

Each watch was taken completely down to clean all of the parts. The hairspring was removed and the balance wheel tested in the poising tool. If the watch had passed previously through a poor repair shop it was often necessary to place washers under the balance timing screws.

A broken balance staff was quite common if the watch had been dropped. Father would rough out a new one from rod in approximately one hour, using only a hand graver and not a cross-slide. Naturally there was more to do after that—final fitting, burnishing pivots, resetting timing screws, etc.

One learned not to attempt any task as a master repairer after doing heavy work such as gardening—hand vibrations persisted after physical exertion. There was also the task of maintaining a level head under stress and delivery pressure.

Digressing for a moment to wages and workload—a reasonable wage during the years between 1930 and 1939 for a “lower-middle-class” family was 5 pounds sterling per week. In those days only the husband worked. The normal workweek (in an establishment) consisted of five nine-hour days, plus Saturday morning.

As I remember, the approximate fees my father received and the times he required for cleaning or repairing a gent’s wristwatch were as follows:*

Thus five pounds per week of income (assuming 6 shillings and 2-1/2 hours per job) required 42 hours of work. Allowing for the usual disaster, we are looking at a 55-hour week, which was okay if one worked at home. A new small row house at that time cost about 780 pounds, and a small new car was approximately 100 pounds.

As far as replacing watch parts went, there really was no such thing. Of course one could buy new mainsprings, watch glasses, and similar items from a supplier, but there were so many different types of construction that it was almost impossible within the time frame given to order and obtain most other parts—so one just did not lose any! But of course such losses occasionally did happen—another story.

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