Pocket Watches and Waistcoats

[Pleater]

I have a pocket watch, an Ingersol, I bought it myself, some time in the late 1960s I think - it has a second hand and I used to use it to calculate speed through the water when sailing. I tripped over and lost the lanyard and keeper overboard, but held onto the watch and the boat.
It still keeps good time, but I need to adjust the regulator between summer and winter as the temperature affects it.

I do have part of a gold watch chain, but it is only long enough to make a bracelet - the ends were sold off inch by inch, or ounce by ounce when times were hard back in the days when there were shops which bought and sold gold and silver items on the High Street. In one of them the chain had a clasp and keeper chain fitted and I added a few oddments I collected as a child to make a charm bracelet.

I have seen photos of my father and his father wearing matching watches, chains and an amethyst jewel - a fob, I think it was called on the end of the chain not attached to the watch. There was a bar to put through a buttonhole and a matching clip or pin, with another amethyst to go on a tie and a small glass tube between two amethysts to go on the lapel to keep a buttonhole flower fresh. I suspect that they were for the funeral of someone a couple more generations back - there was a bit of land and money in that side of the family but grandad lost the lot.

Anne the Pleater