A HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX 



various chemicals. By substituting this pro- 

 cess for the use of quicksilver, which formerly 

 prevailed, silvering has now become as little 

 dangerous as any other branch of the trade. 

 When the cost of plate-glass became so much 

 reduced, and the use of mirrors in all kinds of 

 furniture increased, the trade grew consider- 

 ably ; but during quite recent years, although 

 the price of glass has still continued to fall, 

 the London trade has remained stationary. 18 



Our English glass at the present day suffers 

 much from the competition of French and 

 Belgian glass. 1 ' The foreign glass is not only 

 cheaper to produce, wages being lower where 

 it is made than in this country, but it is said 

 to be purer and whiter in colour, because of 

 some superiority in the material available. 



Through the exertions of Dr. Salviati, a 

 native of Venice, the old glass industry of 

 Murano has been successfully revived, and a 

 London company (known as the Venice and 



Murano Glass & Mosaic Company, Ltd.) was 

 formed in 1870 for the sale of its goods. 

 One department is the manufacture of enamel 

 mosaics, an excellent example of which may 

 be seen in the mosaic decorations of St. Paul's 

 Cathedral. The firm also largely produces 

 table glass of artistic design and fine quality. 



It remains to speak very briefly of artists in 

 stained glass. Some excellent work has been 

 done by firms of the present day. Much of 

 the painted glass produced by Messrs. Cottier & 

 Co., of Grafton Street, is extremely fine, both 

 in design and colour. Messrs. James Powell & 

 Sons, of South Kensington and Bayswater, 

 whose principal works are at Whitefriars, 

 have supplied six windows for St. James's 

 Church, Marylebone. Messrs. Clayton & 

 Bell, of Regent Street, have placed some good 

 windows in Ely Cathedral ; and Messrs. 

 Heaton, Butler & Bayne, of Garrick Street, 

 have also executed very fine work. 



CLOCK AND WATCH-MAKING 



The early history of the clock and watch 

 trade in London is very obscure. Very little is 

 known about the early clockmakers, and had it 

 not been for the custom of marking the works 

 of each watch with the name of its maker, our 

 knowledge would have been still more scanty. 

 The obligation of stamping all gold and silver 

 cases at Goldsmiths' Hall affords some statistics 

 of the number of watches produced in Eng- 

 land, but not of the hands employed in their 

 manufacture. A contributor to Knight's 

 London? writing in 1842, estimates the average 

 annual number of watches which passed 

 through Goldsmiths' Hall at 14,000 gold and 

 85,000 silver. This estimate is much below 

 that given in the report of a committee of the 

 House of Commons made in 1818, which 

 gives the number of watches stamped at Gold- 

 smiths' Hall in 1796 as 191,678. This latter 

 number, which includes both gold and silver 

 watches, has never been equalled before or 

 since, and probably included large numbers of 

 the inferior watches with forged makers' names 

 which were then flooding the country. 



The principal makers mostly congregated 

 in the City of London, but many settled at 

 the West End in the neighbourhood of the 

 Court, so that Middlesex had its fair share of 

 the prominent craftsmen of the metropolis. 



11 Charles Booth, Lift and Labour of the People of 

 Lond. (Ser. 2), i, 189. 

 "Ibid, i, 189 n. 

 ' Knight, Lond. iii, 141. 



In Soho there was an important settlement 

 of French watchmakers, skilled operatives 

 driven over by the Huguenot persecution. 

 Since the beginning of the i8th century 

 Clerkenwell has been the great centre of the 

 working members of the trade. Many streets 

 were almost wholly occupied by workmen 

 engaged in the various subdivisions of the 

 trade, such as 'escapement maker,' 'engine 

 turner,' 'fusee cutter,' 'springer,' 'secret- 

 springer,' 'finisher,' 'joint finisher,' &c. 



An early reference to clockmaking in 

 Middlesex relates to the clockmaker or clock- 

 mender of Westminster Abbey in 1469, one 

 Harcourt, who was employed also by Sir John 

 Paston. Writing in the spring of that year, 

 Sir John mentions two clocks which he had 

 left for repair in Harcourt's hands, one of 

 which was 'My Lordys Archebysshopis.' 2 



Some of the most skilled clockmakers em- 

 ployed in England during the i6th century 

 were foreigners. Nicholas Cratzer or Craczer, 3 

 a German astronomer, was 'deviser of the 

 King's (Hen. VIII) horloges,' and lived thirty 

 years in England. He was a Bavarian, born 

 in 1487. Six French craftsmen were im- 

 ported in the time of Henry VIII to make a 

 clock for Nonsuch Palace. Nicholas Oursiau, 

 Frenchman and denizen, was clockmaker to 

 both Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth, and 

 constructed the old turret clock at Hampton 



158 



1 Paston Letters (ed. 1900), ii, 393. 

 1 F. J Britten, Old Clocki, 45. 



