A  mint and very rare condition 18k gold late-18th century verge chain driven fusee consular cased pocket watch by Feddiman of Canterbury, fully serviced, overhauled and keeping good verge time. A late 18th century watch by Richard Manners who led a charmed life, originally from London and apprenticed at 14 through the Clock and Watch makers company to his uncle Thomas Manners of  Old Street, in the Parish of St. Lukes in the City of London, 1767.  He appears to have completed his apprenticeship  in 1775 and then made free and became a watch-maker in his own right.

In October 1782 a warrant was issued for his arrest along with multiple accomplices for breaking into a watch and clock-makers shop on Fleet Street.  Notes taken from paper-work received with the watch.

[ACCOUNT of the most audacious ROBBERY and inhuman MURDERS, committed by a Gang of Footpads with Richard Manners Watch Maker of Old Street, on the Person and Family of the Rev. Dr. Martin. Exon : Printed by T.Brice, Goldsmiths'-Street, 1782. (Broadside)

Late on the evening of Wednesday, the fourth of September, 1782, Reverend Dr. Martin was robbed as he returned to London with his wife and three children while they travelled through Finchley Common. The story of the Martins’ experience appeared in a broadside printed shortly after the crime, and the author stated that the robbers behaved with “the utmost rudeness and brutality.” Like many similar rural areas just outside of London, Finchley Common was intimately connected with the expansion of the city during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.35 Common lands such as Finchley Common, were privately owned either collectively or by a single person. However, people who did not own it still held traditional rights to use the land: for example, to gather firewood or let their livestock graze freely.36 A large number of people like the Martin family traveled through or used these lands for various purposes day or night. For many Londoners, including the Martins, the visit to Finchley Common, resulted in a robbery. As the reverend and his family travelled through Finchley Common, a gang of eight or nine footpads stopped them on the road. The footpads, muggers and robbers who robbed on foot and preyed upon pedestrians, approached the family with their pistols and cutlasses drawn. The family footman tried to protect the Martins, but he was shot by one of the robbers and died on the spot. The doctor, awestruck by the immediate murder of his servant, fumbled for the property demanded by the gang. At least one of the robbers grew impatient and hacked at the reverend’s knee with a cutlass. The author of the report insisted that the footpads “behaved with the utmost Rudeness and Brutality.” The youngest child, a four year old girl frightened by the violence, began to scream.

One of the gang members silenced her with the “most horrid imprecations,” fired his pistol and lodged several slugs into the child’s head. The robbers also took watches, money, and even their shoe-buckles, and left the doctor and his wife emotionally scarred and “distracted ever since.” The printed notice on which that contained this account stated that “the utmost Industry has be used to discover the Murderers, but hitherto without Effect.” The author of the broadside called this story one several audacious Robberies and inhuman Murders lately committed, and stated that the streets of London have become “infested with every sort of villains.

This villainous plague, came about in part from criminals who committed minor crimes and were then sentenced to hard labor in places that functioned as seminaries of vice. When not working, guards shackled the prisoners in the hulks” (large ships left in dock in the Thames River).

This infamous gang was later caught and found to consist of High-Way Men, Foot-Pads, Prostitutes and key workers in the London Guilds with insider knowledge of shops and business. In November 1782, the majority of the gang were either transported, put on prison ships or in the case of the infamous Richard Manners, sentenced to be hanged. The watch-maker, Mr. Manners escaped from the floating ship prison where he was held with several other accomplices. He is last reported in New England in 1785, living in Concord, Massachusetts and is believed to have served in the Colonial Army.

This is a beautifully made English key-wound man's verge pocket watch, dating from ca. 1781, from the Georgian period.The watch is in full working order and comes complete with a key for winding and presentation box. The buy it now price is a clear reflection of the incredible rarity, stunning condition and long-term investment for this watch. Mint watches in this condition, can only rise in value, given the limited supply of such items.