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LEFT
The inner case, which is hallmarked Chester 1820, betrays the guilty
secret of this watch;
it has been re-cased. The bored-out winding-hole
is the most obvious tell-tale (others are the
stamped serial number 3006
which differs from that of the movement, and the enlargement of the
cut-out
for the movement release catch.) However, this case was also
made for a Joseph Johnson watch, since
it bears his initials. Johnson's serial numbers are particularly difficult to interpret and clearly
did not run in a single sequence; unfortunately an extraordinarily high proportion of the surviving watches
have been re-cased, so that the hallmarks become valueless as dating indications. However, it does
appear that the initial sequence had reached the 7000s by 1825, so that this movement may date from 1822-23.
Notice the revolving cover for the winding-hole, a refinement found only
in the earliest years
of the nineteenth century.
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This watch came to me from Christchurch, New Zealand, and the
watch-paper shown here
(dated 1869, 1871 and 1873 on the back)
suggests that it has spent most of its life there; Windsor
is now a suburb
of that town. It seems likely that the watchmaker was one of the prolific Broderick
family who plied their trade in Boston, Lincolnshire (not Boston MA, as stated in earlier versions of
this page) for nearly a century from about 1790.
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I am greatly indebted to Mr. John Meyer of Las Vegas
(a descendant of the Johnson family)
for
much additional information on the firm's history
and on serial numbers, and also to Mr. Hugh Watson
for information about the Broderick family.
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