Masters, the son of a watchmaker, had run a workshop and shop in Rye from 1869 onward selling English watches, but latterly importing and casing up Swiss movements. The dial reads “THE VERACITY WATCH – J.N. I have since had it professionally serviced (at a cost somewhat exceeding the value of the watch) and it now runs perfectly, albeit with the regulator at the “slow” extreme of the setting range. To my surprise, when I wound it up the watch ran for a few days. Was this Joseph Smith’s silver pocket watch? (photo Colin Alexander Smith) Now, if Joseph Smith had a reputation for punctuality, he must have had a reliable timepiece to refer to day and night.Ĭould that watch be the timepiece I had before me now? the grand secret of his success was punctuality in all business matters and perseverance.” Smith, during which it was observed that “. Smith held a “bean feast” for 40 employees and guests in Thames Ditton, which was reported in the West Middlesex advertiser 1867 as “an example worthy of imitation” and at which a toast was drunk to Mr. Joseph Smith was one such employer.īy 1867 the business had prospered to the extent that Mr.
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Some cab drivers subsequently became owner-employers with a fleet of carriages and horses, employing not only drivers but also mechanics, blacksmiths, and stable hands. My great-great-great-grandfather Joseph Smith is listed in the 1851, and subsequent, London censuses as a “cab builder and owner” (the term “cab” is derived from the French “cabriolet”) 1851 was a pivotal year for the London cab industry as the Great Exhibition drew more than four million visitors to the capital (equivalent to one-third of the population of the British Isles) and, as a result, the city’s cab drivers earned substantially larger than usual sums over the six-month period. London cabmen from ‘Street Life in London,’ 1877, by John Thomson (photo Wikimedia Commons) His forebears had started and owned one of London’s largest horse-drawn cab companies, based and residing in what soon became some of the most sought-after streets in Chelsea, eventually selling up their stock of some 70 horses and carriages in 1911 as motor vehicles gradually took over. If they had dug deeper into our family history, as my brother has done recently, they would have learnt that my grandfather had simply carried on a long family tradition going back four generations to the mid-1800s. My grandmother’s and aunt’s socially aspirational reticence was misplaced. was a taxi driver!” My cousins turned to their mother and replied, “So what?” Some years later my cousin, who had been told the same story, revealed that her mother had sat her and her sister down one day and said, “I have something to tell you, girls. Or perhaps that “wireless operator” was a euphemism for an operative of a more clandestine nature whose activities carried on long after the war and into the cold war period, rather like the central character in Michael Ondaatje’s Warlight. His occupation would remain a mystery for us as the answer was invariably, “Well, he was a wireless operator during the war.” I could only conclude that in post-war Britain, having been “a wireless operator during the war” entitled one not only to a “demob suit” but also a lavish pension and a lifetime of ease, as another 22 years had elapsed between the end of World War II and Grandpa’s statutory retirement date, during which time he allegedly did nothing. I remember asking my grandmother, many years ago, “What did Grandpa do?” The author’s grandfather’s silver pocket watch (photo courtesy Colin Alexander Smith)
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