Watch-jobber

1881, Claudius Saunier, The Watchmakers’ Hand-Book, translated, revised and augmented by Julien Tripplin and Edward Rigg, London: J. Tripplin, Preface, p. vi, In recent years the work of the ordinary watch-jobber and repairer has undergone considerable change. The apprenticeship he serves, if indeed it can be called a real apprenticeship, is shorter than formerly.

Between the High Street and the shingle beach, divided from the rest of the town by a drawbridge, was Portsmouth Point, ‘the Wapping of Portsmouth’, a picturesque, heterogeneous assemblage of taverns, liquor-shops, eating-houses, cook-shops, tailors, drapers, pawnbrokers, watch-jobbers, and trinket-merchants, backed by a warren of mean streets and alleys.