OKAY HEREâS THE THING ABOUT THE FUCKING POCKET WATCH.
Pocket watch keys were not disposably easy to get. You couldnât walk into any Her Majestyâs Royal Station of the Petrol and have a rack of them waiting for you. They had to be purchased from a watchmaker, and by virtue of being literally part of a piece of jewelry, they were not cheap. Thatâs why a lot of contemporary drawings of the period will show the key hanging on the watch chain, and also why youâd want to take a great deal of care with using oneâbend it and your watch is useless until you can get to a watchmaker. Likewise, the watch itself would be delicate. They were items for the well-to-do. One reason watches were carried outside, on the front of the body, was to protect them from being thrown around in your pocket with keys and coins. (Being in front protected from pickpockets and also let people see you were wealthy enough to own a fancy watch. Think of it as similar to the person who carries the absolute latest iPhoneâŚwithout a case on it.) Yes, they were sturdy by modern standardsâa 150-year-old pocket watch may still run and keep accurate time, if you can find a jeweler to maintain it for you!âbut that doesnât mean they were super-tough. They WERE, however, made of metalâbrass or pewter for the less-moneyed element, silver or gold for the gentlemanâand thus not easy to scratch if you werenât really jamming the key in there. MOVING ON!
During this period, how you looked and presented yourself was ridiculously important and narrow; you can walk into a gas station for a new charger and be like âyeah I got drunk last night and forget whose car I left mine inâ and the clerk will be like âoh thatâs a mood,â but try going to a watchmaker and saying âah yes, I tried to wind my watch after a bottle of wineâ and youâre going to get SUCH A SIDE-EYE. Your reputation will go right down the gutter and along with it, your familyâs; note how many times in contemporary Victorian literature you see people saying stuff like âheâs well-bredâ or âfrom a fine family background.â Reputation was everything and it was incredibly fragile.
So when Holmes looks at Watsonâs watch, what he sees is: a piece of expensive jewelry shot to shit by being carelessly thrown in a pants pocket rather than a watch-pocket, which would have held the watch firm and protected it from other metal objects. The watch also was not worn on the waistcoat in absence of a watch-pocket, implying its owner did not give a damn how he lookedâUNTHINKABLE for a Victorian gentleman. Why not? Well, either heâd have to be a wild eccentric or suffering from a terrible illness. The main way to treat things like Parkinsonâs at the time was âpolitely ignore it until itâs impossible to ignore, and then the person will take to his bed, and then he will die.â Watsonâs brother was likely not an eccentricâeven an eccentric would have taken care of a delicate piece of custom machineryâtherefore he was probably ill. But his illness hadnât prevented him from going out and aboutâhence the dinged-up appearance of the watch. A man who was bedridden would have kept the watch on his bedside table.
So we have a sick man whoâs still able to get up and about, and heâs pawned this watch not once, not twice, but four times. Remember what I said before about reputation? Today shows like Pawn Stars have done a lot to destigmatize pawnshops, but in Victorian times they wereâŚnot looked on kindly. They meant youâd had Some Kind Of Misfortune and Needed Money, and to the Victorian mind, youâd probably Brought It On Yourself, which meant youâd been doing something Quite Disgraceful. (Notice the only two appearances of a pawnshop in the ACD canon are âThe Pawnbrokerâs Assistant,â in which said assistant is a criminal mastermind and the pawnbroker himself a greedy idiot, and the story of Watsonâs watch.)
So: a damaged piece of expensive jewelry thatâs only moderately easy to damage; spends frequent time in places of ill-repute; sick, but mobile; never mentioned by Watson, and thus likely embarrassing.
The modern version doesnât fall apart because lots of things cause hand tremors. The modern version falls apart because ITâS EXTREMELY EASY TO SCRATCH PLASTIC AND CHARGING CORDS ARE A CHEAP, COMMON ITEM.
There. Iâve wanted to get that off my chest for AGES.
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