Author’s Preface

Summary

This book is not about clocks and watches. It is about the Bedfordshire people who gained their livelihood by working with them, whether as makers (in the strict sense of the word), journeymen or skilled employees, repairers, or retailers - anyone, in other words, who regularly described themselves as clock and watchmakers, placed their names on horological artefacts, or worked on clocks and watches at any date before 1880.

The cut off date of 1880 has been chosen for a number of reasons. First, few clocks and watches were actually made or finished locally after the middle of the nineteenth century. By 1880 people who claimed to be clock and watchmakers were often no more than retailers, perhaps also looking after clocks and undertaking basic repairs. By this date, too, many self-employed tradesmen combined clock and watchmaking with other forms of employment and by the end of the nineteenth century it became common for the larger firms (e.g. E. Deacon & Sons of Luton) to be engaged in a much wider range of commercial activity. Furthermore the use of individual names gave way to business identities (e.g. John Bull & Co. of Bedford). Not all these developments were new - look, for instance, at the advertisements of Edward Appleford and Thomas Willson of Dunstable in the eighteenth century - and they can be easily overstated, but taken together they make 1880 a sensible date at which to draw the line.

At the time of writing - although information from the 1891 census returns will be released in January 1992 - the most recent census available for public access is that for 1881. As a rule of thumb, it may be assumed that information (beyond the cut-off date where relevant) on all people engaged in the clock and watch trade up to and including 1881 will be found in this book. People and businesses first mentioned after 1881 (e.g. listed in the 1885 Directory) are excluded.

It is, of course, primarily a biographical book based on genealogical rather than horological research. My own knowledge of horology is confined to limited experience of examining turret clocks and to what I have gleaned in recent years from membership of the Antiquarian Horological Society.