QUEST FOR A CLOCK

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 87, 9 October 1926, Page 20

QUEST FOR A CLOCK

PRESENT OWNER UNTRACEABLE,

When addressing the .West Hartlepool (England) Eotary Club on "Old North-Country Clocks" Mr. C. Leo Eeid, Newcastle, gave the history of "Master Humphreys's Clock," made famous by Charles Dickens, and mentioned that he had been unable to trace the present owner of this clock, and would be glad to have information on that point. This" clock, writes a correspondent of the Newcastle "Weekly Chronicle," was no .figment of the novelist's imagination, but a , truly remarkable work of a youth of 16 or 17 years of age, for William Humphreys, (son of Thomas Humphreys, of Barnard Castle) was born there in 1812, and in 1828 commenced to make this celebrated clock, which he enclosed in a very fine lacquered case of the grandfather typo. It was one of the first to be made with the centre-seconds hand; a large hand (or pointer) moving round the entire circumference of the whole dial in one minute. Charles Dickens stayed at the King's Head Inn, Barnard Castle, opposite Thomas Humphreys's shop. Dropping in one day to time his watch by the fine grandfather clock, which stood just within tho doorway, he asked old Thomas, "Who made that clock?" Humphreys replied "My lad, there," and Dickens remarked, "So that is Master Humphreys's Clock" and. named his novel after it. William Humphreys removed to Old Hartlepool in 1838, and took "Master Humphreys's Clock" with him. One writer on this subject states that in 1887 it was on view in the North Court of the Newcastle Jubilee Exhibition. Where is it now!