All in Good Time

Reflections of a Watchmaker

George Daniels

• Publisher: Philip Wilson Publishers
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780857732842
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Artist Biographies

All in Good Time is the remarkable story of George Daniels (1926-2011), the master craftsman, who was born into poverty but raised himself to become the greatest watchmaker of the twentieth century. Daniels stands alone in modern times as the inventor of the revolutionary co-axial escapement, the first substantial advance in portable mechanical timekeeping over the lever escapement, which has dominated ever since its invention in 1759. Daniels's love of mechanics embraced not only the minute, however - he was also a passionate collector and driver of historic motorcars. This revised and expanded edition of his autobiography also contains a new section that illustrates and discusses over thirty of the pocket and wrist-watches Daniels himself made over the years. Witness here the triumph of intelligence, ingenuity, matchless skill and singularity of purpose over the most unpromising of beginnings.

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‌All in Good Time

The Wage Earner

I made my first consciously definitive decision in August 1939, while standing at a factory bench. I resolved never again, except by force of law, to follow any path that did not appeal to me. I was nearly fourteen, and in my last year at school, but because money was needed to help sustain a large family, I had already been put to work. I had a job in a bedding factory, clipping bed springs together to form the foundations of the company’s Sleepeezee mattresses, and to someone already familiar with the mechanical charms of clocks, watches, gramophones and bicycles, it was desperately dull work and truly soul-destroying.

I remember little of my three companions at the bench, all newly started mattress engineers of about my own age. I found nothing of interest in their company. The foreman was thickset, thick-headed and degradingly vulgar in both his speech and his mannerisms. When I diffidently approached him to ask if I might be allowed to work one of the spring-making machines his reply was terse, and his estimation of my worth unflattering. But having spent my life among the rougher elements of the so-called working classes, I was familiar with such expressions, and merely discounted those who uttered them as inferior and useless, including my father, who could even add an element of hatred. To this day I am completely impervious to those for whom I have no regard.

The wages were seven shillings per week, of which I was allowed to retain two, while the remainder was added to my mother’s slender purse. Just how this was divided between household necessities and my father’s beer I never knew, but my diet did not improve, nor did I acquire any new clothes. One had learnt, however, never to question.

In the neighbouring town of Kingsbury there was a watchmaker’s shop which I visited whenever I could. I was on good terms with the proprietor and longed to work there. The shop had no fittings except for a combined bench and counter covered in worn tools, dismantled clock movements and cigarette packets, all mixed up with dust and ash. Because my eyesight was better than the proprietor’s he found my assistance useful, and I wished I could spend every day there. But that was impossible; he could offer only five shillings a week for my labours, and the bedding factory paid seven. There was to be no horological career for me, and that was that. My familiarity with the importance of money had generated a resilience to daily circumstance that enabled me to find satisfaction in whatever came to hand, and so I felt no sadness at being deprived of the company of my beloved clocks. I had no alternative and would, as always, just have to get on with it.

Now, for the first time that I could recall, I felt despondent. In my second week of drudgery at the bedding factory I calculated that I would be fifty before I could retire. It would have been foolhardy simply to quit, for this would have incurred the wrath of my parents, whose interests lay in my income. However, being of a resourceful nature, I set about escaping from my depressing situation by other means.

At weekends, after school, it had been my practice to collect wooden boxes from the local shopkeepers and reduce them to firewood for sale. In this way I became well-known to many shop assistants and housewives, and within two weeks of starting at the bedding factory I found employment as an errand boy, delivering groceries to local houses. The work brought many blessings. Firstly, I was out in the open, which I loved. Secondly, because I already knew many of the women I delivered to from my firewood sales, they made appreciative comments to the manager of my branch of Bishop’s Stores in Kenton and so enhanced my position. If, for example, I was late in returning from errands during the cricket season, I would be only mildly chastised. Thirdly, I had the use of the errand bike at weekends and, finally, of profound importance to my mother, the pay was ten shillings a week, of which I kept two shillings and sixpence.

My cup of happiness was truly full to overflowing. Because of the friends I had made selling firewood, it had, in the end, been simple to escape from that dungeon of a bedding factory. And that was when I made my first definitive decision. I am now aware that my parents helped me in that decision. So profoundly uninterested were they in my welfare that they made no prejudiced decisions for me, and I was left entirely to my own devices. Provided I brought home some wages, they had no interest in my occupation. At fourteen years old I was blissfully content with this arrangement, but could not know how very lucky I was. I now realise that this lack of direction as a child left me with an open mind to build a life and career entirely independent from my family, and to enjoy it to the full.

Early Recollections

I grew up as one of eleven children. In addition, my father had two other children by a previous marriage. He was a mystery to us children, although I do not recollect my two brothers and eight sisters ever expressing any curiosity about him. We were never visited by grandparents, aunts, uncles or cousins. There seemed to be no relations, and we grew up not expecting to see any. Questions about our background were dismissed with contempt. Then, in 1938, when I was twelve years old, we were visited by my father’s sister and her husband (who transpired to be her second husband, she had three altogether). The visit came as an unwelcome surprise to my parents, who were oddly agitated by this unexpected reminder of the past. My aunt was most tenacious, and had discovered my father’s address by visiting all the schools in an ever-widening circle from the last address she had for him in Hackney. Her appearance opened my mind: I no longer felt that we were shrouded in mystery and that we had no place in society. My aunt and I became firm friends and remained so until her death in 1976.

I do not remember my father ever saying a kind word to anyone. He was violent and intemperate, and seemed to nurse a hatred for everyone he came into contact with. He was of medium build with undistinguished features, unless one counted a small moustache. He was a carpenter by trade, but he never liked work, and in 1938, when he was forty-nine years old, gave it up altogether. Henceforth he made no provision for his family but, on the grounds that he was too ill to work, simply left it to my mother to wheedle money from whatever source of charity was available. He managed to keep up this pretence for the rest of his life. He died in 1958.

As I got to know my aunt better in the years following her first unexpected visit, I learnt something of my father’s history. He was one of two sons of a furniture maker in Hackney, a centre for wood workers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. My grandfather was what is sometimes described as larger than life. He was big, powerful, generous and just. But like so many successful, self-made artisans he liked to spend his evenings boozing. He could become very violent when drunk and was easily provoked. Not that this was unusual in the East End of London at that time. Local quarrels and fighting were commonplace, especially on Saturdays when whole communities would spend the evening in the local pubs – of which there were very many – erasing the misery of the week’s toil. My grandfather would take his family along, and as often as not they would fall out and begin fighting among themselves on the way home.

Even as a young man my father was temperamental and very erratic in his habits. He was treated generously by my grandfather, who would toss him a golden guinea when he was irritable and obstinate at the factory and tell him to take the day off. He was clever with hands, and was skilled with radio, building several radio sets from the component parts then readily available. Indeed, he never found it necessary to buy a radio; chassis frames and the more complex tuning devices could be bought from local shops, while wire coils and various other components could be made. When loudspeakers took the place of earphones he built them with wooden frames covered in cloth treated with aeroplane dope. In our early days, c.1930, we children were not allowed to touch the wireless, as it was then called, but we did have a crystal set. This was made with a coil of wire and a small piece of crystal. Contact between the two was made by probing the crystal with an adjustable wire until the station was picked up in the earphones.

In later years my father built a radiogram and by 1940 had built his own television set, ready for the reopening of Alexandra Palace Studios after the war. But he could never find the necessary tranquillity of mind to make the most of his talents, and the habits he acquired as a young man in Hackney remained with him throughout his life. His first wife had been a music-hall singer who, my aunt told me, had died of pneumonia as a result of being beaten by him so that she fell down stairs and suffered severe injuries. We children accepted his drunken violence as part of life, though not without some fear.

My aunt told me many other stories about my newly discovered relations. One in particular epitomises the relationship between my grandfather and father. On one occasion my father had abandoned his first wife and gone to South Africa to make a fresh start. After only a few months he wrote home saying that he wanted to return and make up. My grandfather immediately sent a telegram entreating him to come home and assuring him that all was forgiven and forgotten. In due course my father arrived back at Southampton and was met by his family at the head of a welcoming brass band. Festivities started as soon as they reached the hotel. They continued into the night, and vast quantities of drink were consumed. In the early hours of the morning my aunt retired to bed, pleased with the family spirit that had been revived by my father’s return to the fold. Shortly afterwards, however, she was woken by confused noises coming from the courtyard, where she discovered my father and grandfather in physical conflict!

My mother was born in 1901, the daughter of a colliery official in Durham. She grew up in a house devoid of affection and at fourteen was put to work as a live-in scullery maid. The work entailed long hours, from lighting the fires early in the morning to cleaning the kitchen utensils after the supper was cleared away late in the evening. Like my father she had been married before. She was twenty-two when she married her first husband, a Royal Naval Commander thirty years her senior. He died soon after the birth of their only child, my future half-sister. Her subsequent marriage to my father produced three sons, of whom I am the eldest, and eight daughters. None were welcome.

My mother was a woman of huge native intelligence. Both quick on her feet and deft with her fingers, she could do huge amounts of work with speed and concentration. She had no love for her work but was puritanical about it. It was simply there, and therefore had to be done as swiftly as possible. No matter what one’s circumstances, no matter how bereft of comfort, there was no excuse for uncleanliness. Her mind was as agile as her body and she could add long columns of figures, including farthings, in her head without error. No one ever short-changed or outwitted her. She could assess a situation almost before it developed and gain any advantage that was to be had, and because she had so little money to spend even on necessities, she was skilled at gleaning and bargain hunting. She gathered in old clothes, shoes and toys for her expanding family from any source available. The harshness of her upbringing and her married life had made her cynical and avaricious. She trusted no one, and had no patience with people if there was no gain to be had. So great was the daily anxiety of finding sufficient food and clothing for her many children that she was perpetually bad-tempered. Her behaviour to us was often vicious. There could be no discussion on any matter once she had issued her orders. Instant obedience was expected and a moment’s hesitation would bring an impatient slap across the mouth and face. To utter a sound against this usually unjust punishment would bring immediate retribution from the other hand. The safest thing was to keep quiet and stay out of sight. In the eighteen years I lived at home she never addressed a kind word to me. Consequently there was no bond of affection between us, and I have no pleasant memories of life with her.

But there is no animosity. I well remember the bleakness of her circumstances and the misery she suffered at the violent hands of her husband. Bruises and black eyes were common and she was nothing more than a convenient scullion to him. She didn’t have to marry him, but as a widow with a two-year-old child and another on the way, her only alternative was shame and misery. At least in marriage she had respectability and misery. In the working-class environment of that time, respectability was all one had to hang on to. I saw her only half a dozen times in her last forty years, and on each occasion her sole topic of conversation was criticism of her children. It was a curious and useless means of trying to curry favour and affection from whomever she was talking to. To have eleven children, and not a true friend among them, was a tragedy for her, and one she could never understand. In 1991, two years before her death, she wrote to me apologising for my ‘miserable home life’. I had never mentioned the subject.

Life At Home

I have already referred to the secrecy that surrounded my parents’ lives. On one occasion, as a small boy, I asked where I was born, and was met with a torrent of abuse: I was prying and causing trouble. My existence was never discussed, only despised, and I never asked again. But I knew there was some mystery about me. I was not very curious about it, but I knew it was the reason for the contempt my parents had for me. It was not until I was in my early twenties and in need of a passport that I discovered I had no birth certificate, simply because I had not been officially born. Investigation based upon information supplied by my kindly aunt produced a christening certificate in the name of George Cadou, the name of my mother’s first husband. A comparison with his death certificate showed that he could not be my father, and so the great mystery was revealed. I had been born before my parents were married. This seemed to me to be very little reason for the hatred and misery that had always been inflicted on me. In his most abusive moods my father would always refer to me as ‘the bastard’, and so clearly displayed his hatred for my existence. It is difficult for a very small child to know what to make of a violent parent. I just kept out of his way as much as possible. In later years my mother-in-law advised me that ‘it is a wise child that knows its own father!’

From the age of two I can clearly remember the poor conditions in which we lived. There were three of us at that stage: myself, my elder stepsister Eileen, and my younger sister Georgina. We all slept in the same bed, without clothes, and with just one blanket to cover ourselves. When the weather was very cold we would lay an old rain coat over the blanket for extra warmth. There was no heating, and frost formed thickly on the insides of the window panes. In the mornings, to while away the time until my father left for work and it was safe to come out, we would kneel in a close group on the bed with the blanket pulled around our shoulders and I would lead in singing and story telling. My songs and stories, which I made up, were very popular. When my mother was out during the day we would have the run of the house and got up to every sort of mischief. In the evenings we would be put to bed, and my parents would go to the pub and stay there until closing time.

We moved frequently. Most of my early years were spent in flats above shops, and I can remember five different flats in as many years. Often we moved at night. My father’s chief concern was the radio, and he would carry this himself. Apart from a washstand in my parents bedroom, two beds, a table and two chairs, I cannot remember there being any furniture, so a move was a fairly simple matter. One was made with a hand cart to another flat across the street. Everything that was movable was taken. The wires and nails my mother used to hang the curtains were carefully taken from one flat to another. The same pieces of linoleum were laid on the floor and tacked down. In all it amounted to so little that everything would be in position in a matter of hours.

The earliest flats we occupied were comprised of two rooms and a kitchen over the shop, and an attic above. My parents occupied one of the lower rooms, we children slept in the attic, and the second lower room was the living room. There was no bathroom, and the only sink and taps were in the kitchen. Water was available if the rates were paid. On more than one occasion I was sent to a neighbour for a bucket of water because our supply had been cut off. It seems a strange thing to do. Cutting off the water only made us miserable, was unhygienic, and brought no benefit to the Water Board. But there was very little social charity in the early 1930s.

The rooms were lit by gas lamps, but we were not allowed a lamp in the attic. Only one lamp was ever used in any room, so it was rather gloomy in the winter evenings. The lamps burned with a faint hiss, much like a kettle singing, which I came to regard as rather homely. When my parents were in the pub during the evening I enjoyed sitting silently in the gas-lit kitchen listening to the gas hissing and watching mice, unaware of my presence, scuttling along the skirting boards. This particular flat was above a clothes shop in Watling Avenue in Burnt Oak, Edgware, North London.

I was too young for school, but my stepsister attended one, and from her I learnt to read her infant-school reader. She simply told me what the word meant and I remembered what she said...