James Pyott, Unassuming Chronometer Maker

James Davidson Pyott was born on 10 August 1825.  His eighteen year old father, also James, was a watchmaker, born in Dundee.  The 1841 Census found them at Ramsgate Street in Stockton-on-Tees, and it appears that son was apprenticed to father, perhaps informally.  Ten years later the family had relocated to London, living in Long Acre, near Covent Garden.

An advertisement in the Clerkenwell News, 6 February 1858, is intriguing in that it may have been placed by either man.  Young James’s life and work is the much more completely documented, but he was never associated with this address, so it is perhaps likely that this was his father’s pitch for work:

 Fig.1. © The British Library Board

On the other hand, Pyott Jr gave his occupation as the seemingly matching, “Watchmaker Compensation balance maker,” for the 1861 Census return, domiciled by then at 2 Cumming Street, Pentonville with his wife of two years, Alice, and their infant daughter, Emma.  At the same date Pyott’s business was listed in Collinson’s Directory with premises at 49 Spencer Street.  Through the 1860s Pyott consolidated a good reputation in watchmaking trade circles, becoming a member of the British Horological Institute and, from 1868 to 1876, responsible for auditing the Institute’s accounts.

The 1871 Census recorded the Pyott family at 9 Pentonville Road – by now James and Alice had three daughters and one son, Arthur.  As to the business, from the following year Pyott’s trading address was 7 Jamaica Terrace, West India Dock Road.  As seen in the advertisement reproduced below, James took the premises over from Thomas Barclay:

Fig.2. Advertisement in the Shipping & Mercantile Gazette,

 frequently inserted, Autumn 1872/January 1873. © The British Library Board

Shown below is a 1870s example of Pyott’s work, chronometer #389:

Fig.3. Courtesy Ariescavern

Through the 1870s and to the turn of the century, Pyott was listed in directories in this road, usually at number 74, as seen on this trade label:

Fig.4. © Royal Museums Greenwich

Pyott first submitted a chronometer to the annual Greenwich Trials in 1875, placing 34^th (of 49) with movement #395.  Three years later he achieved the high distinction of coming First with #478.  Conversely, in 1894 and 1902, a Pyott chronometer was rated Last.  He entered instruments for the Trials most years between 1875 and 1904, with results summarised in the table below:

Year	Movement Number	Position/Chronometers on Trial
1875	395	34/49
1876	398	19/47
1877	458	7/35
1878	478	1/29
1880	474	30/44
1881	474	21/43
1882	488	25/46
1884	818	22/34
1885	818	23/45
1886	878 887	13/37 26/37
1887	887 878	16/52 45/52
1888	886 902	12/28 21/28
1889	886 902	36/47 44/47
1890	860 916	26/38 34/38
1891	860 914 916 862	22/51 29/51 36/51 37/51
1892	999 862	28/48 38/48
1894	960	60/60
1895	960	56/63
1896	962 958 936	44/66 53/66 61/66
1897	936 960	39/78 48/78
1901	998 964	9/51 35/51
1902	1206 964	25/31 31/31
1903	1206	17/40
1904	999 984	15/43 42/43

Whilst most makers sought to capitalise commercially by referring to Trials results and the Maker to the Admiralty boast, Pyott apparently did not, since he mainly made movements for other ‘makers’ and retailers, his name/signature very rarely appearing on dials/movement plates.  Tony Mercer referred to this in letters submitted to the Antiquarian Horology Journal:

Another group were the dedicated craftsmen/makers who seldom, if ever, put their own name on the dial but made for other, more commercially minded makers, such names as Lawson, J. Smith, E. Sills, Pyott, Hammersely and Cogden are but a few.^{Antiquarian Horology, volume 18, no.2, p95}

(Concerning a thousand chronometers sold by Kelvin Bottomley & Baird, (and related firms)) . . .they were made by Kullberg, Poole, Pyott, Mercer, Johannson, Usher & Cole, Dodd and Gardener.^{Antiquarian Horology, volume 9, no.6, p100}

In the 1880-90s Pyott’s business acumen was however evident in his decision to widen his ‘stock-in-trade’ beyond timepieces, embracing the market for marine-related instruments – Sotheby’s, in 2002, for instance, selling a sextant attributed to him.  And the barometer, shown below, bears his West India Dock Road address:

Fig.5. Courtesy Mallams

Pyott became interested in local government and was nominated to stand for election in the South Ward of Limehouse in 1897.  Financially secure, he was able to begin his retirement in the affluent milieu of Mayfair, living with Emma and Arthur in Balderton Street.  He might perhaps had hoped that Arthur would carry on the watchmaking business, but his son is recorded in the 1901 Census as an actor, and his wife, Nellie, an actress.

James Pyott died a little short of his ninetieth birthday, in April, 1915.  He was by then at Keith Lodge, Allknutts Estate, Epping.  Cause of death was given as senile dementia.

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

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.

The Great Exhibition

At the same time as the decline of the English watchmaking trade was progressing, two major exhibitions were mounted in London extolling the quality of British commercial enterprise.  This was certainly appropriate in regard to the manufacture of chronometers in London, but, as far as more mundane pocket watches were concerned, the wares displayed by many of the exhibitors had been made on the continental mainland.  Thus the Great Exhibition of 1851 and the International Exhibition of 1862, tended to represent British horological excellence increasingly in the form of retailing, rather than of manufacturing, expertise.

The Great Exhibition, 1851, (Crystal Palace):

© Victoria and Albert Museum, London

The event is well summarised in the V&A’s website, here. 

Horological exhibits are listed in the Catalogue in the section, ‘Class 10. Philosophical, Musical, Horological, and Surgical Instruments.’  47 entries relate to makers/vendors of pocket watches/chronometers, including:

1. Bennett, J. 65 Cheapside, Inv and Manu. . . . Marine chronometer.  Bennett’s model watch, on a magnified scale; constructed to show the most compact form of the modern watch, with all the recent improvements.  For more on Bennett, see The Old Watchword, post November 2015, here. 

John Bennett was born in 1814.  His parents, John and Elizabeth were watchmakers, living and working in Greenwich.  John Jnr carried on after their deaths, moving to the City in 1846 with premises at 65 Cheapside.  He eventually expanded these by taking over no. 64 and also had a presence at 62 Cornhill.  The business was successful and Bennett further elevated his status by becoming a councillor in the 1860s and a sheriff in 1871.  He was knighted in 1872.

Bennett’s business was attuned to the prevailing conditions with considerable savvy.  He sought to cut manufacturing costs as a response to the erosion of English makers’ market share resulting from the price competitiveness of Swiss imports, (which he decried), yet he had no compunction about utilising Swiss movements himself in his products.  Equally, he was energetic in his approach to marketing, his press advertising being especially prolific, for example: 

19. Delolme, H. 48 Rathbone Pl. Oxford St. Des. And Manu. – Gold watches, manufactured entirely in England.  Stethometer.  Marine chronometer.  I completed a study of Delolme’s life and work in February 2018.  Notice the difference in approach to the imports issue from that of Bennett whereby Delolme seeks to make an unconditional virtue of the fact that his products are, ‘manufactured entirely in England.’

Delolme did not however create his watches in London from scratch.  He utilised rough movements sourced from the Prescot (Lancashire) manufactories.  The London Daily News, 15 September 1851, reported Delolme’s exhibits as follows:

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.

Notice that Delolme lacked Bennett’s assertive marketing instinct – with modesty he refers to his prices as being, ‘comparatively moderate.’  His work though could be superlative, as seen, for example, in this Marine chronometer, #850, (c-1857):

Courtesy of Ben Wright Clocks

34. Barraud & Lund, 41 Cornhill, Inv and Manu – Marine chronometer with a model of a newly-invented compensation–balance.  Common marine chronometer.  Small gold pocket chronometer.

A fully illustrated overview of the firms involving members of the Barraud family over their long period of commercial activity – from c1840 through to the twentieth century – is provided here. 

Barraud Marine chronometers were of especially good quality and a considerable number were purchased by the Admiralty.  The auxiliary compensation invention referred to in the Exhibition Catalogue text was unusual in that it was based simply on a weight affecting the balance wheel.

Shown below is a pocket chronometer, #3/127, (1869):

Courtesy of Sotheby’s

35. Parkinson & Frodsham, 4 Change Alley, Cornhill, Manu – Astronomical clock, with mercurial pendulum, eight-day chronometer, lever watches, pocket chronometers, &c.

The highly respected partnership of William Parkinson and William Frodsham was established at 4 Change Alley in 1801 and was located there until 1842.  The business remained active, at Budge Row until 1947 – now that is longevity!

William Frodsham became an eminent spokesman for the English watchmaking trade – a natural development from his fulfilment of the role of Master of the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers in 1837/8.  In 1842 Frodsham was a leading opponent of the proposed British Watch and Clockmaking Company, by which Pierre Frederic Ingold intended to establish modern factory-model manufacturing as a means of making English products price-competitive with Swiss imports.

The Frodsham family became one of the very most important in British horological history.  William’s son, Charles, was already a successful maker in his own right by the time of the Great Exhibition, at which he was awarded a first class medal, his entry in the Catalogue reading:

57. Frodsham, C. 84 Strand, Manu. – Astronomical clock.  Marine chronometers.  Gold pocket chronometers and lever watches. The double rotary escapement.  Day of the month watch.  Specimen of gold lever watches, with the split-centre second’s-hand movement.  Railway watches.  Portable chime and other clocks, &c.

Charles Frodsham & Co Ltd trades contemporarily and on its website claims to be ‘the longest continuously trading firm of chronometer manufacturers in the world . . .’  Charles became every bit as influential as his father, and followed him as Master of the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers.

Charles was just one of William’s four sons, the others being, Henry, George and John, and they, and their descendants, forged careers in the Trade, helping to establish several firms: Frodsham & Co., G. E. Frodsham, Frodsham & Baker, Frodsham & Keen, Arnold & Frodsham.

This a typically fine deck watch by Parkinson & Frodsham, #4436, (c-1856):

Courtesy of Auktionen Dr. Crott

55. Dent, E. J. 61 Strand, 33 Cockspur St. and 34 Royal Exchange, Manu. – Large assortment of ladies and gentlemen’s superior watches.  Marine chronometer, with a glass balance-spring, glass balance, and compensation, for variation of temperature, of platina and silver.  Azimuth and altitude compass.  Dipleidscope.  Astronomical and other clocks, &c.

Edward John Dent, though not its original inventor, developed the dipleidoscope for practical use and patented it in 1843.  It is a device which supports the accurate setting of timepieces by observation of the position of the sun or moon.  As might readily be imagined, complex instructions were necessary, and Dent wrote a detailed user’s manual:

Dent’s business and more conventional – and very fine – products are covered in the 2015 post here, and here. His Marine chronometers were considered to be first class.  This example, dating from c-1850 is #2254:

Courtesy of FJ & RD Story Antique Clocks

5. Watkins, A. Inv. And Manu. – Eight day self-acting repeating chronometer, comprising 200 pieces of mechanism.  Small three-quarter plate chronometers, with hard cylindrical springs, jewelled in every hole.

My study of Watkins was published in the April and May 2016 issues of Clocks Magazine.  I have also featured his work here in the 2016 posts, here, and here. 

In a future post here I will look at some of the watchmakers represented at the 1862 International Exhibition.