Ruth Belville

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Ruth Belville in front of the “Shepherd gate clock” in Greenwich, 1908

Elizabeth Ruth Belville (born March 5, 1854 in London , † December 7, 1943 ) was a British entrepreneur who sold the exact time for more than four decades . To do this, she compared a chronometer with the officially measured time ( Greenwich Mean Time ) in the Royal Observatory in Greenwich and then visited subscribers in the city of London, who set their watches using Ruth Belville's chronometer. This service was introduced by Ruth Belville's father in 1836 and operated by her until 1939. Ruth Belville became a local celebrity for her unusual activities and went down in London history as the "Greenwich Time Lady".

biography

Ruth Belville was born on March 5, 1854 in the London borough of Greenwich. Her father, John Henry Belville, was born in France and was 59 years old when she was born, and Ruth's mother, Maria, was his third wife. Ruth Belville had three older half-brothers and three older half-sisters who came from the two previous marriages of the father, including the photographer Cecilia Louisa Glaisher (1828-1892), who had married the meteorologist James Glaisher .

John Henry Belville worked at the Royal Greenwich Observatory, where he assisted the astronomer Royal John Pond with weather observations from 1811 . In the years 1849 and 1850 Belville summarized his experience in dealing with thermometers and barometers in two manuals ( A Manual of the Barometer , A Manual of the Thermometer ). Under Pond's successor, George Biddell Airy , Belville also took on the task of transmitting the time regularly measured at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich Mean Time, to certain customers such as watchmakers in London from 1836 . To synchronize the various clocks with the clock in the Royal Observatory, Belville used a silver- framed chronometer, which had been manufactured by John Arnold in 1794 , and which could show the time to the tenth of a second. The chronometer, later just called "Arnold", was originally intended for Prince Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex , the sixth son of King George III. , have been made. It served Belville's customers as a reference clock, according to which they could then set their own clocks.

Ruth's mother Maria Belville, 1892

When John Henry Belville died in 1856, his widow Maria took over the task of regularly delivering the man's customers with the exact time. This business was the sole source of income for Maria Belville. She visited the Royal Observatory in Greenwich several times a week and had the accuracy of her "Arnold" certified there. Maria Belville ran the business until she was 80. In October 1892 she retired due to health reasons, and Ruth Belville took over the company in her place.

Although the General Post Office had been telegraphing the time since the 1870s and the Standard Time Company, a private company dedicated to the transmission of time signals , was founded in 1882 , Ruth Belville remained a loyal customer base. However, the number of subscribers fell from 200, who were still supplied with the time by John Henry Belville, to around 60 customers in 1908. In 1908, their annual income was around 200 pounds sterling, according to their own information . However, many subscribers did not want to do without Ruth Belville's services, as the "Arnold" was more accurate than the electric clocks. Belville's chronometer, which she carried in a handbag, was checked against the clock in Greenwich every Monday at around 9 a.m., and the Royal Observatory confirmed in writing that the times were identical.

Despite the small customer base, Ruth Belville's business aroused resentment from the competition. A high-profile incident occurred in 1908 when St. John Wynne, managing director of Standard Time Company , accused her of dishonest methods and old-fashioned service in a speech. Wynne's abuse was reprinted in the London press, but it turned out to be a welcome advertisement for Ruth Belville, who rose to become a celebrity known beyond the borders of London as the "Greenwich Time Lady". Newspaper reporters scrambled for interviews with her, photographs of Belville were published and even German newspapers reported on her.

In the decades that followed, Ruth Belville remained a familiar figure in Greenwich and the City of London . The press repeatedly became aware of Belville and its seemingly anachronistic service, and in 1936 it finally gave the BBC a detailed radio interview. Until recently she had 40 to 50 customers whom she visited every week even in old age. Although the Royal Observatory has broadcast the famous time signal with the six beeps (the Greenwich Time Signal ) on the BBC radio station since February 1924 and introduced its own time announcement as a telephone service in 1936 , it continued to support Belville and its company.

It was not until 1939, at the age of 85, that Ruth Belville retired. The unmarried pensioner spent the last years of her life in an apartment in the London borough of Beddington, which she had already moved into in 1934. There she died on December 7, 1943, at the age of 89, of carbon monoxide poisoning .

Aftermath

When Ruth Belville gave up her job as a saleswoman for the time in 1939, a 103-year tradition ended. Belville had no offspring, and with the time being transmitted to the second by telephone and radio, the Royal Observatory in Greenwich saw no need for anyone else to continue Ruth Belville's service.

The prominent role of Ruth Belville and her parents in the history of timekeeping at the Royal Observatory has been emphasized in several obituaries , including entries in The Observatory magazine and the Journal of the British Astronomical Association . The chronometer, the Arnold 485/786 , which has been in the family since 1836, bequeathed Belville to the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers . It is on display today in the Clockmakers' Museum in the Guildhall , London .

In the decades following Ruth Belville's death, the Belville family's achievement was mostly mentioned as a side note in the history of the Greenwich Royal Observatory. A more detailed appreciation followed in 2008 in the biography Ruth Belville: The Greenwich Time Lady , published by the National Maritime Museum , which was reviewed in numerous specialist magazines and newspapers and thus brought the story of Ruth Belville back to the public.

literature

  • Stephen Battersby: The lady who sold time . In: New Scientist , No. 2540, Feb. 26, 2006, pp. 52-53.
  • David Rooney: Ruth Belville: The Greenwich Time Lady . National Maritime Museum, London 2008, ISBN 978-0-948065-97-2 .

Web links

Commons : Ruth Belville  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ David Rooney: Ruth Belville: The Greenwich Time Lady , p. 31.
  2. ↑ David Rooney: Ruth Belville: The Greenwich Time Lady , p. 163. The Observatory's obituary mistakenly names December 10th as the anniversary of Belville's death, see The Observatory , Vol. 65, April 1944, p. 148.
  3. ^ Derek Howse: Greenwich Time and the Longitude . Philip Wilson Publishers, London 1997, ISBN 0-85667-468-0 , p. 90.
  4. ^ Caroline Marten: Glaisher, Cecilia Louisa (1828-1892) . Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , Oxford University Press, October 2006 (online version, January 2007; accessed via www.oxforddnb.com)
  5. ↑ a b Obituary: A Purveyor of True Time . Journal of the British Astronomical Association , No. 54, 1944, p. 19.
  6. ^ A b John Hunt: The Handlers of Time: The Belville Family and the Royal Observatory, 1811-1939 . Astronomy & Geophysics , Vol. 40, February 1999, pp. 1-27.
  7. ^ David Rooney: Ruth Belville: The Greenwich Time Lady , p. 63.
  8. ^ David Rooney: Ruth Belville: The Greenwich Time Lady , p. 97.
  9. ^ Daily Express : Woman Who Sells the Time: Strange profession of the Belleville ( sic! ) Family , March 9, 1908.
  10. ^ David Rooney: Ruth Belville: The Greenwich Time Lady , p. 98.
  11. ^ Hannah Gay: Clock Synchronity, Time Distribution and Electrical Timekeeping in Britain 1880–1925 . In: Past & Present , No. 181, November 203, pp. 118-120. Contemporary sources reported that Beville visited the observatory several times a week, or even daily, see for example Donald De Carle: British Time . Crosby Lockwood & Son, London 1947, p. 109.
  12. ^ Greenwich "Clock Lady": Romance of a Regular Visitor to the Observatory . The Observatory , Vol. 31, July 1908, p. 297.
  13. ^ David Rooney: Ruth Belville: The Greenwich Time Lady , p. 124.
  14. ^ Derek Howse: Greenwich Time and the Longitude . Philip Wilson Publishers, London 1997, ISBN 0-85667-468-0 , p. 91.
  15. ^ The Observatory , Vol. 65, April 1944, p. 148.
  16. ^ Donald De Carle: British Time . Crosby Lockwood & Son, London 1947, p. 109.
  17. ↑ for example in Alun C. Davies: Greenwich and Standard Time . In: History Today , Vol. 28, Issue 3, March 1978, p. 199.
  18. ↑ for example in Technology and Culture , Vol. 51, No. 1, January 2010, pp. 248-249; The Daily Telegraph , November 26, 2008.
personal data
SURNAME Belville, Ruth
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Belville, Elizabeth Ruth (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British entrepreneur, "Greenwich Time Lady"
DATE OF BIRTH March 5, 1854
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH December 7, 1943
Place of death London