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.
