For many years I have been without a complete and functional verge watch. A recent eBay sale has allowed me to fill this gap at, for once, rather less cost than I expected. The watch has nothing distinguished about it, although the 'frill' around the cock-table is an agreeable touch, and it seems to have had a good deal of rough handling; but if not in its original state it almost certainly looks very much as it did over two hundred years ago, and it is still clattering away merrily, gaining at the moderate rate (for a verge) of about fifteen minutes a day.
The vendor read the maker's surname as Servis, but I interpret it as Lewis; Baillie mentions a George Lewis as working before 1772. The serial number 9067 is abnormally high for the 1700s, and this raises the question whether 'George Lewis' could be a dummy name used by a Swiss maker, similar to the well-known instances of 'Simpton', 'Samson' and 'Tarts', all of which are likewise found with very high numbers; but I can see nothing about the watch that looks un-English. The hallmarks are small and poorly struck (unusually, the impressions in the inner case are even worse than those in the outer which I have photographed as best I could), but the date-letter seems to be an upper-case Old English A for 1756. This I think is consistent with the style of the movement (the cock foot is still quite broad), but I feel that the dial (with only a row of dots to mark the minutes) must be twenty to twenty-five years later, and presumably the case-bolt catch was converted at the same time; in 1756 it would have taken the form of a finger projecting through a slot in the dial.
I cannot identify the case-maker's mark SP. Priestley gives no instance of these initials earlier than that of Southern Payne in 1775, and both his registration records show a stop between the letters, whereas here there is none. A later pendant, in the style of about 1800 but with a lamentably shortened stem, has been roughly soldered onto the inner case, with a reinforcing plate attached inside. The outer case, which shows the dim remains of what was once an elegant monogram, has taken an extraordinary battering; it looks for all the world as if someone had tried his utmost to bite his way through it between 12 and 4 o'clock. Why this treatment did not result in the total destruction of the movement is an utter mystery. Another lesser puzzle is the pointer (perhaps a cut-down hand) mounted on the regulator disc and secured by a brass pin through the setting-square. As this pointer revolves with the disc, it seems to serve no purpose. The three small screws in the slide-plate must be nineteenth-century replacements, I think.
Clearly a watch with a past! Perhaps I should sit up with it by candle-light next Hallowe'en and see if it will put on a performance, like the dolls' house in M. R. James's story.
Oliver Mundy.
The vendor read the maker's surname as Servis, but I interpret it as Lewis; Baillie mentions a George Lewis as working before 1772. The serial number 9067 is abnormally high for the 1700s, and this raises the question whether 'George Lewis' could be a dummy name used by a Swiss maker, similar to the well-known instances of 'Simpton', 'Samson' and 'Tarts', all of which are likewise found with very high numbers; but I can see nothing about the watch that looks un-English. The hallmarks are small and poorly struck (unusually, the impressions in the inner case are even worse than those in the outer which I have photographed as best I could), but the date-letter seems to be an upper-case Old English A for 1756. This I think is consistent with the style of the movement (the cock foot is still quite broad), but I feel that the dial (with only a row of dots to mark the minutes) must be twenty to twenty-five years later, and presumably the case-bolt catch was converted at the same time; in 1756 it would have taken the form of a finger projecting through a slot in the dial.
I cannot identify the case-maker's mark SP. Priestley gives no instance of these initials earlier than that of Southern Payne in 1775, and both his registration records show a stop between the letters, whereas here there is none. A later pendant, in the style of about 1800 but with a lamentably shortened stem, has been roughly soldered onto the inner case, with a reinforcing plate attached inside. The outer case, which shows the dim remains of what was once an elegant monogram, has taken an extraordinary battering; it looks for all the world as if someone had tried his utmost to bite his way through it between 12 and 4 o'clock. Why this treatment did not result in the total destruction of the movement is an utter mystery. Another lesser puzzle is the pointer (perhaps a cut-down hand) mounted on the regulator disc and secured by a brass pin through the setting-square. As this pointer revolves with the disc, it seems to serve no purpose. The three small screws in the slide-plate must be nineteenth-century replacements, I think.
Clearly a watch with a past! Perhaps I should sit up with it by candle-light next Hallowe'en and see if it will put on a performance, like the dolls' house in M. R. James's story.
Oliver Mundy.
