Like Clockwork

Every Monday morning for forty-nine years, from 1892 to 1940, Ruth Belville rose early and traveled from her home outside London into the city and then to the Royal Observatory at Greenwich. There her eighteenth century gentleman’s pocket watch, a family heirloom, was checked for its precision to one-tenth of a second. Every week, she received a certificate of its accuracy from the staff at the Observatory, and, thus armed, made her way back toward central London to sell the time to a number of subscribers. She’d begin in the East End docks and make her way westward, visiting the city’s commercial district; the clock and watchmakers’ neighborhood, Clerkenwell; and the luxury retail areas around Bond Street, Regent Street, and Mayfair, in the West End.

These were long and arduous days. She had about fifty subscribers in all, and visited about thirty per week. Most of her clients were watch and clockmakers, or large industrial firms that needed accurate time to do business. But