Time gentlemen, please

The past lives with us longer than we know. It did so in the romantic figure of Elizabeth Ruth Belville, Time Carrier.

Ian Seymour

Elizabeth was born on 5 March 1854, the daughter of John and Maria Belleville. John was the child of refugees from revolutionary France, literally born in their escape. In England, the family was befriended by John Pond, Astronomer Royal from 1811, who made John Belville an assistant astronomer at Greenwich. Pond retired in 1835. His replacement, George Airy, had a reputation as an austere and efficient man who resented intrusions on his work. These included incessant requests for time checks from clockmakers, sailors and the like. He asked John to take care of these.

John established a remarkable service. With a precisely corrected Arnold pocket chronometer, made in 1794, he paid weekly visits to 200 London businesses, setting and adjusting their clocks to Greenwich time. He died in 1856, by which point the observatory had already established an electrical time signalling system. Many clients found this unpleasantly impersonal, and with Airy’s support and cooperation, Maria continued the work. When she retired in 1891, Elizabeth, who also taught Music and French, inherited her role as Time Carrier.

The business continued, quietly and unnoticed, until 8 March 1908, when St Andrew St John Winne addressed a City social club. The talk was the climax of a campaign on behalf of his Standard Time Company, the sellers of a cheap electrical time service. Its directors, posing asaltruistic citizens, had been earnestly writing irate letters to the press, supposedly exposing Elizabeth Belville for using her feminine wiles to lure customers. The talk mocked her at length, as a symbol of all that was wrong with the Empire.

This was incredibly unwise. It resulted in enormous press and public sympathy, which catapulted Belville from total obscurity and won her many new clients. ‘The Greenwich Time Lady’ joined the sights of London: visiting the observatory before 9.00 am, setting ‘Mr Arnold’ and completing her rounds.

She continued her work as the world changed around her, with broadcast time-signals and the TIM speaking clock making access to precise time universal. It was not until 1940, aged 86, that she finally retired when the Royal Greenwich Observatory relocated in wartime. Elizabeth Belville died from carbon monoxide poisoning due to a broken gas mantle on 7 December 1943. Her watch, Mr Arnold, was beside her.

Ian Seymour