The working life of Museum of London

The main reason for my obsession with the eighteenth century fashion of wearing two watches is a ‘fausse montre’ (French for fake watch but so much better-sounding) that I discovered in our Strong Room (that’s where we keep our valuable objects under many locks and keys).

The description on our database is not particularly revealing: ‘Pinchbeck chatelaine with false watch. 4 suspension chains, one attached to watch key, 1 to glass fob of swan [more about that later] & 2 attached to false pocket watch with blue & white painted enamel dial’.

The watch formed part of a bequest by William Edward, second Viscount Harcourt (b. 1908), who played a very important role in the foundation of the Museum of London. He was chairman of its Board of Trustees from 1965 to 1975, and then of its Governors until his death in early 1979 (and he now watches over me every day from a very nice photograph propped up in my office).

As you would expect, Lord Harcourt had very distinguished ancestors, including the Most. Rev. and Rt. Hon. Edward Venables-Vernon-Harcourt, Archbishop of York (1757-1847) who married in 1784 Lady  Anne Leveson-Gower (1761-1832), daughter of Sir Granville Leveson-Gower, 1st Marquess of Stafford, who held several high government offices. I mention these particular ancestors because they were around when this kind of watch was worn.

Why would a member of such a wealthy family wear a fake watch? Well, fausses montres were not necessarily cheap. On my beloved Old Bailey website it is recorded that in February 1796 a certain William Lee stole a ‘diamond fausse montre’, worth £40, amongst a very, very large number of other valuable items from a jeweller in St James’s Street. Quite a lot of money for a fake watch if you consider that a farm labourer would have probably earned no more than £15 per year.

Members of the royal family thought nothing of giving fake watches as presents. King George III’s son Prince Frederick wrote to his brother, the Prince of Wales, from Hanover in 1781: ‘I must give you the commission to distribute a few trifles which I have sent directed to you to be given among my four sisters, one fausse montre is for the Princess Royal, and the other with the sypher [sic] upon is for Puss.’

The popularity of dummy watches coincides with the rise of the two-watch fashion in the 1770s. Edward J. Wood wrote in his book Curiosities of clocks and watches from the earliest times (1866): ‘The foppery of wearing two watches was soon approved and adopted by the ladies; but it was found to be too expensive to wear two real watches, and accordingly a true watch was worn on the left side and a sham one on the right side of the person’. He then somewhat contradicts himself, and proves my above point, that ‘false watches were in some instances of gold and silver, and sometimes enriched with jewels and enamelled miniatures at the back.’ These miniature portraits were disguised as watches so that you could contemplate the face of a beloved while pretending to check the time. Bring it back!

So what does all this reveal about our very own fake watch? As it is a chatelaine/equipage it seems to have been made for a lady. I am aware the following statement is not very scientific, but I think the watch nevertheless has a manly air about it and I have to admit that is now proudly worn by William Oxtoby, one of the gentlemen in our Pleasure Garden display.

Our watch is definitely of the cheap variety. Made to look like gold, it is made of pinchbeck, an alloy (not entirely sure what that is, chemistry was never my strong point) of copper and zinc invented by a certain Christopher Pinchbeck, a London clockmaker, in the early 18th century.

I thought the animal depicted on the seal might provide a clue and connect it somehow to Lord Harcourt’s ancestors (it might of course not have been an heirloom but rather a curiosity Lord Harcourt picked up during his lifetime). I didn’t think the animal was a swan but because the seal is made of glass, I found it very hard to photograph it in a way that showed the bird (or dragon?) clearly (looking at it with the naked or be-spectacled eye is even less revealing). So I asked Hannah, one of our applied arts conservators, to make (take?) an impression. If you always wanted to find something interesting to do with dentist putty, have a look at the next instalment.