Dead on 12 o'clock
This post was written by Kirsten Tambling
Frank Hope-Jones must have had a taste for the gothic. In 1934, his Synchronome Company advertised the new ‘Synchronomains’ turret clock unit citing a ‘medieval legend with a modern moral’.
The ‘legend’ went that during the Peasants’ War of 1524–5, the rebel Goerz of the Iron Hand was taken hostage at Schaumburg Castle, where his enemies had made implausibly macabre preparations for his torture and execution. Dragged to the summit of the clock tower, Goerz’s head was thrust through the enormous dial just below the 12.
The great hands had been reversed – the minute now the shorter of the two – and replaced with blades. At every pass, the reduced minute hand would pierce the victim’s flesh, until the newly extended hour reached the twelve, when his head would be severed from his body and fall into the moat.
However, the Synchronome Company was sceptical any weight-driven turret clock could muster the requisite force for the coup de grace. If only it had been a Synchronomains! In that case, 'either hand would have completed the headsman’s task with ease – without interfering with the accuracy of the clock!'
The story was pitched as a medieval legend, but someone at Synchronome must have been reading The Royal Magazine, a cheap monthly run by C. Arthur Pearson. 'The Clock Face of Schaumburg', by Kirby Draycott, appeared in its inaugural issue (November 1898). The frontispiece showing Goerz’s final moments – later snaffled by Synchronome – was by the English artist C. Twist Pinaud, who seems to have taken some liberties with the clockless Schaumburg Castle.
However, Draycott’s protagonist was real enough: the historical Götz von Berlichingen (1480–1562) was a mercenary soldier whose titular prosthetic limb can still be seen at Jagsthausen Castle.
His end was less bloody but arguably equally unlikely – he died peacefully in his 80s. Perhaps Draycott thought death by turret clock an ironically fitting alternative end for 'the iron hand'.
At any rate, the purportedly medieval story certainly furnished an attention-grabbing campaign for the Synchronomains, which promised clocks unfailingly dead on the hour.
