Jose Rodriguez Losada

Marine Chronometer #1765, by J R Losada

The January 2020 issue of Clocks Magazine features my article on the watch and clockmaking businesses founded in the eighteen thirties in London by Spaniard, Jose Rodriguez Losada.  It is a convoluted saga, with many aspects of interest, and one that continued through to the century’s closing decade.

Losada and his nephews had a modern approach to marketing and exploited a range of means by which their products would be seen as being of high quality – for example by trading from prestige location premises, (Regent Street), illustrated press advertising, participation in international exhibitions and endorsement by government/military authorities.

This latter consideration was sought by many makers throughout the nineteenth century by entering their chronometers into annual trials conducted at Greenwich Observatory.  These trials tested the accuracy of submitted timepieces over a period of seven or eight months and in varying ambient temperatures.  Originally instituted in 1822, after a break in the mid-eighteen thirties, the trials were held each year through to the outbreak of the First World War.  The results formed the basis on which the Admiralty made purchasing decisions for the marine chronometer requirements of the Navy’s ships.  When a chronometer was thus selected, its maker greatly valued the consequence that they could then inscribe, ‘Maker to the Admiralty’ on the plates of their movements and use the accolade in their advertising.

The number of makers/instruments submitted to the trials varied considerably over the years.  As few as 17 chronometers were tested in 1852, while the count was up to 58 in 1861.  The low number may well reflect makers’ alternative focus on preparing for their participation in the Great Exhibition of 1851, and it is perhaps relevant to note that the number dipped from the 1861 high to 36 in 1862 – the year of the International Exhibition.  Most makers submitted two chronometers and in many instances, year after year.  The average number tested in the 1840s was 38, in the 1850s, 23, and in the 1860s, 51.

Losada was atypical in his approach to the Greenwich Trials.  He submitted his #1417 in 1849, and it was placed 20^th of 31 in terms of accuracy.  I think he viewed this result as potentially counter-productive – that if he couldn’t achieve a top-ten result by participating he was risking having his products seen as inferior to those of several of his competitors.  So he did not submit again.  If this left him missing a potential product feature he could advertise – ‘Maker to the Admiralty’ – his later deal with the Spanish Government to supply 38 chronometers, will have compensated.

Losada’s nephew, Jose del Riego, entered his chronometer, #3890, to the trials in 1882.  Unfortunately, his result was much worse than Losada’s – 46^th of 46.  Not surprising therefore that no further Riego chronometers found their way to Greenwich in subsequent years!

Birchall Father and Son, Chronometer Makers

Peter Birchall was born in 1799.  It is thought that his parents were William and Ellen, then living in Widnes.  A record exists of the marriage of William Birchall to Ellen Yates at Prescot in September 1789.  There were multiple associations of the Birchall name with watch and clock making in North West England in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.  According to Britten’s, George Birchall was a Warrington watchmaker, c. 1793-1820, and he may have been the junior partner in a firm, Birchall & Son, 1770. ^{Ed. Baillie, Ilbert and Clutton, Britten’s Old Clocks & Watches and their Makers, (London: Bloomsbury Books)}  There was a William born in 1749 who died in 1820, but his sons were named William and Steven.  Another ‘possible William,’ a watchmaker of Wellington Street, St Lukes, died in 1842, but, again, a son named Peter does not appear in his will.^{One of the sons, James, also a watchmaker, committed suicide in February 1847}  Holden’s Directory for 1802 lists a William Birchall, watchmaker, at 11 Kirby Street, Hatton Garden.  The location, Burton Crescent, a little to the east of Clerkenwell, near St Pancras, is also associated with the Birchall name in the 1820s.

There is no record of an apprenticeship having been served by Peter, and it is likely that he was trained by his father.  Whatever the facts of that, his horological ability was such that by 1840 he was confident enough to be submitting two of his chronometers to the Greenwich Trials.  Furthermore, one of them, #281, was good enough to be placed seventh of twenty-eight, and thus his work was out-performing that of such illustrious names as, Pennington, Parkinson & Frodsham and Santiago French.  This chronometer also did better than two made by R & H Molyneaux.  The latter business occupied premises at 30 Southampton Row, which, two years later, were taken over by Birchall and his friend/partner, Henry Appleton.  The 1841 Census shows Henry, then sixty three years old, living at 50, Myddleton Square with Peter, Peter’s wife, Winnie, and their son John, just one year old.  Appleton was renowned for the quality of his work, making him a key employee for several years in the Molyneaux firm.  Given this, and his twenty years seniority, he may well have played the role of a mentor and greatly contributed to the success achieved by Peter in the early Greenwich Trials which are summarised in the table below:

Fig.1. Peter Birchall’s Chronometers on Greenwich Trials

This chronometer, #880 is c.1865:

Fig.2. Chronometer #880  Courtesy of WorthPoint

Peter had married Winnie Hitch in 1826.  Their son, William Peter, was born in 1838, and he too would eventually make chronometers which would be proved excellent at Greenwich.  The couple had another son, John, who also worked in the family watchmaking business until his death in 1871.  The family’s means enabled the employment of a servant at each of the addresses recorded by successive censuses: 1851 – 6 Middle Brunswick Terrace; 1861 – 2 Amwell Terrace; 1871 and 1881 – 12a Stonefield Street.^{Amwell Terrace was merged with Great Percy St in the 1860s and the Birchall’s house became number 65} 

Age twenty three in 1861, William Peter was described in the Census as a ‘watch maker’s finisher,’ (as was younger brother, John).  At this stage he had already begun to make a reputation of his own, having entered a chronometer - #1 – to the 1860 Greenwich Trial, and this was rated second only to the #642 of his father’s manufacture. The following year his #9 was rated 7^th.  In 1862 he was elected to the Council of the Horological Institute.  As a further indication of qualified status, his own listing began to appear in directories in addition to those for his father.  William Peter’s Greenwich Trials results are summarised in the table below:

Fig.3. William Peter Birchall’s Chronometers on Greenwich Trials

William Peter married Eliza King in April 1864.  They lived with Peter and John at Stonefield Street, the 1871 Census recording them there together with their sons, Peter, Alfred and John.  (Another son, Herbert, was born in 1873.)  William Peter died, age forty, in 1878, from a subdural effusion of the brain, possibly a rare complication of meningitis.  His father, Peter, was considerably longer-lived, dying in October 1885.

Considering the success of both Peter’s and William Peter’s chronometers at the Greenwich Trials, it is notable that they figure only marginally in horological literature, and I have been unable to find any images of extant timepieces of their manufacture other than that of Peter’s #880, as seen above.  I would be very pleased to receive details of any in readers’ possession and/or photographs of them.

Thank You Omega

A couple of years ago Raynald Aeschlimann, CEO of Omega, kindly invited my eldest son and I to Bienne to visit the new Omega Museum and the production line. My health prevented me from taking up the invitation at that time, but, more recently, plans were put together for the trip from England to be made on 27 September.  In the event, medical advice was against my going after all, but Omega generously arranged for my second son to be accommodated in my place.

My boys had a great time and came away even more Omega brand-enthusiastic. I’m attaching a few of their photographs, but am mainly posting to record my appreciation of the exceptional generosity, friendliness and efficiency of Reynald and his PA, Alexandra Buraglio.  They represent a watch brand which manages to be very charismatic, yet accessible.  The company’s history is a highly interesting one, and the role of the Speedmaster in the NASA moon programmes has been a considerable feature in all the Apollo coverage in this year of the 50^th anniversary of the live broadcast of this goose bumps-inducing dialogue:

“Engine arm is off. Houston, Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed.”

“Roger, Tranquillity. We copy you on the ground. You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again. Thanks a lot.”

The Wild West . . . in South East London

If you ever have reason to start looking into the Frodsham horological dynasty you may, as I did, become excited to happen upon Edward, of that ilk.  Whilst most of the family, from William James (b.1778) through to Parkinson & Frodsham, (surviving to 1947), remained London-based, establishing and developing watchmaking businesses of great repute, this Edward was to be found in the 1870s in Wyoming, U.S.  Described as a jeweller by trade, he apparently had a fearsome temper and was good with a gun.  A succinct pen portrait goes like this: Imprisoned for having shot dead a man who had been having an affair with his wife.  On release was soon in a gunfight at Laramie, killed another man, was arrested, then bailed, moved to Leadville, killed again, for which he was arrested and put into jail, from which he was seized by vigilantes . . . and lynched by them!

Meanwhile, back in England, George Frodsham was in 1876, if a little less extravagantly, also flouting the Law: he was summoned for travelling 2^nd Class on the Great Eastern Railway with a 3^rd Class ticket.

But if George’ delinquency was mild in comparison with Edward’s, one of his fellow London watchmakers, Nathaniel Wegg, would have been quite at home in the gun-toting Wild West.  In 1885 Nat shot a man attempting to break into his watch/jewellery shop in Deptford.  A little reminiscent of Dirty Harry’s line, ‘you've got to ask yourself one question: "Do I feel lucky?" Well, do ya, punk?,’ Nat shouted to the wounded burglar, ‘How did you like it? . . . I have another ready for you.’  And while at the movies, Nat’s approach reminds me of Paul Kersey in Michael Winner’s Death Wish, not only for his liking to be tooled-up, but also as a one man judicial operation, as illustrated by this report in the Kentish Mercury, 14 May 1881:

Wegg is certainly proving to be an interesting subject and my article on his life and business is nearing completion.  However, examples of his work are very hard to find.  So, if you have a Wegg watch – or a photograph/description of one – I’d be very grateful to hear from you.

Another missed

Further to previous posts - 2019 and 2015 - another Alexander Hare Pocket Watch was included in the Jones & Horan sale, 2nd June, described:

The watch sold for $1,800. It's another that I feel I've 'missed,' (because I was overly-focused on the Alexander Watkins Chronometer in the same sale.) But I'm intent on acquiring a timepiece by Hare and will keep looking.  Meanwhile - courtesy of Jones & Horan - here are some photographs of #406:

Mr Watkins would not have been amused

Following up my March 2019 post, I was very surprised to find that the beautiful little Pocket Chronometer by Alexander Watkins made only $8,600 at auction on 2nd June.  Bearing in mind that it featured in the 1851 Great Exhibition and is a 'one-off'' piece of horological history, the £51,000 it sold for fifteen years ago seemed fairly modest, and how it can have achieved such a very much smaller hammer price now is a real mystery to me.  Someone has acquired for themselves a wonderful bargain!

In cataloging the Chronometer Jones & Horan made available some new images, including several of the cases, and courtesy of J&H, here is a selection:

And, surely, the presence of these accoutrements, should have supported a higher resale value?  I'm certain that Alexander, a notably proud man, would have expected so.

Rags to Riches to Rags

In researching nineteenth century watchmakers  I often find I'm looking at a family business characterised by a diligent, hard-working founder who built up reputation, turnover and capital value, and by sons/grandsons who seem to have taken things for granted and presided over commercial demise, sometimes to the point of bankruptcy.  One such 'story' concerns David Keys (born 1816), and his son, William (born 1856). My account of David's initial success and of William's failure is published in the April 2019 issue of Clocks Magazine. 

Today, discussion of business models is no longer something that takes place only in a high-powered management consultancy or financial institution.  With the recent attainment of the potential facilitation/cost effectiveness of marketing through digital channels, the working principles of all sorts of commercial enterprises, and the need for these principles to change, has become a frequently examined subject in media coverage of current affairs.  Notably, most people - whatever their own occupation/profession - are familiar with the travails of the retail sector, witnessing in our own high streets and malls the disappearance of stores whose names had been familiar (and loved/respected) throughout our lifetimes.

In the current volatile milieu it isn't just old, traditional businesses that have had to reconsider their business model - Apple, for instance, underpinned by vast revenues over recent decades and said to be the global number one brand, has just announced its strategic shift from relying on producing physical goods to an enterprise generating subscription income from a television platform which will integrate with other service provisions and transactional activities.

The commercial environment in the later years of the nineteenth century was similarly volatile. Industrialisation, transfer of the populace from rural to urban locations and improved communication/transportation resources were major factors in a time of great change.  The concept of readily available 'consumer goods' required that shops/stores should become proactive marketers and to survive they needed to find competitive edge.  That William Keys recognised this in the 1880s is to his credit, but that his resulting actions were so ineffective is sad - everything that David had built-up over forty years was dissipated by William within ten.

Marine Chronometer, 1892

Courtesy of Konrad Knirim

Three Follow-ups

I posted about Alexander Watkins and his very fine 1851 Pocket Chronometer in April 2016. As noted in my Clocks Magazine article about Watkins, this watch changed hands in a Sotheby's sale in 2004 for £51,000 - this has always seemed to me a meagre amount for such an attractive and historically-significant timepiece.  So I shall be very interested to see what it makes when it comes up again this summer.  This will be Jones & Horan's sale on Sunday 2nd June - for further details see here. In my experience this is an auction house which really knows its stuff, and their team has in the past been very friendly and helpful to me in my horological researches.

More recently, Isaac Court's 'Patent Time Repeater' featured here.  Rich Newman kindly got in touch from Chicago to let me know about other applications of this fascinating invention - covered in his article:

I've done it again!  Back in November 2015 I was bemoaning missing out on an Alexander Hare pocket watch.  Even more regrettable this time, in the recent sale at Canterbury Auction Galleries.  This was a good example of how much value can be obtained in terms of character and complication if precious metal case material is not so important to a collector:

Courtesy of Canterbury Auction Galleries

To my eye this is a very attractive verge (#386), and not expensive at a hammer price of  £1,900; ah well.

Henry Delolme

Born in Braunschweig (Brunswick), Lower Saxony, in 1799, Henry Delolme was the youngest son of horologist Antoine Nicolas Delolme. The name Delolme is associated primarily with that part of south west France abutting the Swiss watchmaking region centred on Geneva.  It is logical to conclude that the Delolme family was of French origin but relocated progressively for reasons of trade during the seventeenth/eighteenth centuries to Switzerland and subsequently to the central German state.

Antoine gained a reputation for high quality work and was appointed Clockmaker to the Braunschweig Court in the 1780s.  The City experienced considerable turmoil during the early decades of the nineteenth century, being occupied by the French as a Napoleonic conquest in 1806.  Subsequently, the Congress of Vienna established a Duchy of Braunschweig, with the City as its capital.  The regime was notably illiberal, (resulting in 1830 in an uprising and the Duke’s (Charles) replacement by his brother William,) and this was no doubt the main reason why the Delolme family (and others of their like) emigrated around 1810.  Antoine’s later clocks are signed Delolme, Paris, whilst by circa 1827 Henry had set up business in London.  It is likely that Henry formed a partiality for the French in deference to his family’s origins and his own experience during his brief period as a teenager residing in Paris, perhaps as their capital offered a welcoming milieu much in contrast with the repressions and conflicts he had observed in the city of his birth.   The earliest documentary evidence for Henry’s residence in England has been found in the archive (Volume 515) of the insurers, Sun Life, with the entry:

23 January 1827, 1054306, Henry Delolme, 23 Rathbone St., Watchmaker.  On his household goods wearing apparel printed books and plate in his now dwelling house only situate as aforesaid brick, £80 £80. Stock utensils therein only £220, £220, £300.

The next extant record results from his marriage in 1829 to Amelia Lebarthe.  A newspaper report of the theft of watches from Delolme refers to the Business’s location at Rathbone Place but does not clarify the apparent anomaly regarding the building’s number – no.23 in the insurance record, but always no.48 elsewhere.

Fig.1 Cylinder pocket watch

by Antoine Delolme c1820.

Courtesy of Dr Crott Auktionen

Henry and Amelia had six children: John Lewis Anthony, born 18-10-1829, Henry, born 4-01-1833, (died aged 11 months), Jules Charles, born 4-01-1836, Charles John, born 11-09-1837 (d. 1915); Henrietta Charlotte, born 15-03-1839 (married Walter Gorges (Brunswick) 10-10-1867); Louise Gustave, born 08-07-1841.  Charles John initially trained to become a civil engineer, but by 1871 he was assisting in his Father’s business and is referred to as a watchmaker in the 1881 Census return.  The family home and business premises were, as above, at 48 Rathbone Place, which is a turning off the north side of Oxford Street, close to the major junction with Tottenham Court Road.

The 1842 edition of Robson’s London Directory features the listing: 48 Rathbone Place – Henry Delolme, watchmaker and importer of Parisian clocks and Musical Boxes and Importers of Geneva Watch Tools and Materials.  Throughout that decade Delolme developed the quality and range of his products.  Notably, he began to offer Marine Chronometers, for which at that time there was ready and increasing demand in accordance with the navigational needs of an expanding shipping industry driven by global trading.  Thus, by 1851, Delolme’s exhibits in the Great Exhibition included, in addition to seven gold Pocket Watches, two Marine Chronometers.  The latter were based on rough movements sourced from the Prescot (Lancashire) manufactories.  Probably informed by his Continental heritage, he was differentiating his Pocket Watches from those of his more traditional English competitors by seeking to make them as unbulky as possible.  In reviewing his exhibits, a newspaper report observed:

Mr. Delom (sic), of 48 Rathbone-place, exhibits a handsome collection of watches, containing many improvements in construction, the result of his long scientific experience.  By dispensing with the fusee he obtains more room for the other works, and is thus enabled to comply with the present taste for flat watches without any sacrifice of strength or durability.  The duty of the fusee in regulating the inequality of the mainspring is performed by an ingenious contrivance which he very learnedly calls an ‘isochrone pendulum spring’ – this sonorous epithet being the only part of his work which is not entirely of English manufacture.

(Note:  There’s some ‘marketing-speak at play here in order to suggest novelty and a unique feature: after all, as long ago as 1782, John Arnold’s patent, #1328, was summarised as being applicable to, ‘Escapement and balance, to compensate the effects of heat and cold in pocket-chronometers or watches, also for incurvating the two ends of the helical spring, to render the expansion and contraction of the spring concentric with the centre of the balance.’)

Regarding his Chronometers, Delolme was bracketed with some of the most renowned English makers:

In marine and pocket chronometers we have a very creditable display of first-rate workmanship . . . we may mention the well known names of Arnold, Frodsham, Barraud, Dent, Delolme, Gowland. (Morning Chronicle, 9 May 1851)

Around this date Delolme adopted an image of a Marine Chronometer for his advertisement:

Courtesy www.925-1000.com

This is earliest extant Delolme Marine Chronometer currently found:

Courtesy eBay member ‘martawatch’

It has a 2-day movement with Earnshaw-type spring detent escapement.  Numbered 501, it is probable that this is an example of Delolme’s output considerably prior to his participation in the Great Exhibition.  The highest number extant is 1002.  In Chronometer Makers of the World, Tony Mercer indicates a known movement number of 2248 with date attribution of 1899, (9 years after Henry’s death).  He also records examples in a movement number range of 96 to 1355.  Mercer also wrote of Delolme, intriguingly, ‘Honest and straightforward but lost all his money; also, ‘George Oram, chronometer maker, collected funds to his modest requirements.’  There is, however, no record of a formal business partnership involving Delolme and Oram, his contemporary and proprietor of a commercially successful horological business based at Wilmington Square, Clerkenwell.  But whether or not Delolme made the most financially of his talents, the Business was substantial enough to support the employment of four watchmakers.

And beyond his own enterprise he had a care and concern for people employed in the Trade.  With the difficulties English watchmakers experienced in the mid-nineteenth century, especially as a result of loss of market share consequent on the popularity of imported products from Switzerland and America, came a desire by the more successful ‘names’ to alleviate hardship in the Trade’s workforce.  In particular there was a need for accommodation for elderly practitioners who could no longer work and/or afford to rent a home or premises.  As a partial solution, a community of alms houses in New Southgate, known as the Clock and Watch Maker’s Asylum was established in 1857.  Henry was a noted, prominent attender at the Asylum’s inaugural dinner held at the Albion Tavern, Aldersgate Street.

That Delolme had a finely developed social conscience is further indicated by his association with the French Protestant Evangelical Church.  Henry was nominated as a trustee in 1867. He subsequently took on the role of Treasurer to safeguard the funds sought by charitable appeals, an example of which being:

Mission of the French Protestant Evangelical Church in Bayswater:  This mission, by means of which large numbers of foreigners are every year in many ways benefitted, irrespective of creed or nationality, stands in deep need of aid at this present time.  The mission supports a deaconess and a Bible-woman to visit among the foreign population, and administer to their bodily as well as their higher wants.  This mission is without any endowment whatever.

The success of the Great Exhibition inspired further similar international fairs elsewhere in mid-nineteenth century America and Europe.  It also left an appetite for a repeat in London and the realisation of this in 1862 was partly funded by profits from the 1851 event.  Delolme’s Establishment status was affirmed by his appointment to the Exhibition’s horological department planning committee along with elite clockmakers Cole, Webster, Bennett and Upjohn, meeting at the organising Society of Arts’ premises in the Adelphi in August 1861.

The Exhibition opened in Kensington in May of the following year with Delolme again contributing an impressive range of watches and clocks, reviewed as follows:

Mr Delolme exhibits many specimens, including marine chronometers, one of them with metallic mechanical thermometer; astronomical regulator, in plate-glass and ormolu case of entirely new design, with gravity escapement; the pendulum is suspended on friction rollers.  There are also transparent eight-day clocks, for night and day, with invisible movements of novel construction, and lighted by the usual night light; a watch, with metallic thermometer; and a first-class English independent seconds watch, with one train only, being on the principle of the remontoir escapement.

(The ‘remontoir’ solution to the problem of varying input force to the balance is succinctly summarized in Hodinkee’s Watch 101, https://www.hodinkee.com/watch101/remontoir-degalite.  Watch 101 is also instructive in regard to the tourbillon feature seen in the chronometer illustrated below.)

Delolme received a medal in recognition of the excellence of his exhibits.

An example of Delolme’s later production appeared in the Dr Crott 91 Auction sales catalogue, May 2015.  This is attributed with number 8820 and dated to circa1875:

Courtesy of Dr Crott Auktionen

The specification is impressive, summarised in the catalogue:

A heavy hunting case pocket watch with minute tourbillon.  Case: 18k gold. Tiered, engine-turned, a goutte, gold dome with engraving.  Dial: enamel, radial Roman hours, auxiliary seconds, paste-set hands.  Movm,: bridge movement, keywind, signed, nickel-plated, decorated, chain/fusee with Harrison’s maintaining power, finely executed mirror-polished steel tourbillon cage, screwed gold chatons, pivoted detent escapement, gold screw compensation balance, pink gold train, freesprung blued balance spring.

Henry continued at the helm of the Business into his eighties – still recorded as a watchmaker (master), not a retired watchmaker – in the 1881 Census.  As mentioned earlier, son Charles, age 44, is on the same census return and described as a watchmaker.  There is no evidence to suggest that he assumed control of the Business before Henry’s death in 1890.  Equally, with the exception of Mercer’s citing of number 2248/1899, it does not appear that the Delolme name continued to appear on watches made after that date.  So Henry’s brand did not substantially survive him, but during his lifetime it was one which represented technical quality and aesthetic excellence.