Click gait for gentry
Step by step... the story of the pedometer and one man’s fatal brush with a brassica. John Vincent reports.
Nowadays, the healthconscious have only to glance at their iPhone to see how far they have walked. Previous generations had to rely on the good old pedometer, an example of which I wore on my belt as a young man, clocking up six miles a day before ditching it when the constant clicking noise drove me to distraction.
Perhaps Sir Ralph William Frankland Payne-Gallwey, 3rd Baronet, suffered the same feeling when he wore an early pocket pedometer (or step-counter) as he strode the grounds of the family estate at Thirkleby Park, near Thirsk, well over 200 years ago. Now the engraved Watson Bros device – its graduated dial marked with quarter-mile intervals up to 12 miles – has surfaced at a Gavin Gardinder sale in London, where it is listed at £250-£400 on Wednesday.
Sir Ralph (1848-1916) was an engineer, historian, ballistics expert and artist.
His father was newsworthy... albeit mainly for the extraordinary manner of his demise. Sir William Payne-Gallwey, 2nd Baronet (1807-1881), who was MP for Thirk from 1851-1880, died after falling on a turnip and sustaining fatal internal injuries while out shooting in Bagby, near Thirsk.
The Northern Echo was positive about his legacy. “Sir William, during the last few years of his life, conferred a lasting boon on the poor of Thirsk and Sowerby with the erection of some scores of cottage homes, which were let at low rents,” it reported.
His son, Eton-educated William PayneGallwey (1881-1914), was a first-class cricketer and career Army officer, serving with the York and Lancaster Regiment and the Grenadier Guards before being killed in action on the Western Front at the start of the First World War.
As for Thirkleby Park, it was the family home from the 16th century but failed to sell when it was put up for auction after William Payne-Gallwey’s death and demolished in 1927. The entry arch, gatehouse still and stables are still in use and a caravan park was built nearby.
Who invented the pedometer is open to question. Some say Leonardo da Vinci thought of the idea first, sketching the design for a gear-driven device with a pendulum arm. Jean Fernel, a French craftsman, might have invented the first actual pedometer in 1525 – or perhaps it was English scientist Robert Hooke in 1674. In 1780, Abraham-Louis Perrelet of Switzerland created what is widely regarded as the first modern pedometer, and a mechanical pedometer obtained from France was introduced in the US by Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) and is widely attributed to him.
■ At the same Gavin Gardiner sale, a pair of 12-bore sidelock ejector guns ordered by Empress Eugenie of France (18261920) may fetch £8,000-£12,000.