“In 1919 taxi driver Dosylva Cote was waylaid and beaten to death while en route between Worcester and Clinton, Massachusetts. Although his automobile was taken, his money and watch were not. The watch had stopped at 3:30 AM and restarted when shaken, thus likely indicating the time of death.”
Back in 1919, how could a watch have indicated AM vs PM?
Welcome to the Straight Dope, doneck. When commenting on one of Cecil’s columns, it’s customary to link to the original article. I presume this is the one you’re referring to:
As for your question, many watches have a smaller dial divided into 24 segments with a hand pointing to one of the numbers indicating 24 hour time. I have one, and the deceased man in the article could have had one, too. The smaller hand was pointing to 0330. If it was 3:30 PM, it would have pointed at 1530.
Or, alternately, the man could have last been seen alive after 3:30 the previous afternoon and the police could have extrapolated the time on his watch at 3:30 AM.
If he was seen alive at 8PM, then found dead at 7AM, its a reasonable presumption that 3:30 on the watch is the AM.
Sorry, doneck, I didn’t notice your join date. I apologize for thinking that you were new.
Conan Doyle wrote of a similar case:
*Among my headings under this one twelve months I find an account of [several cases including]… the Camberwell poisoning case. In the latter, as may be remembered, Sherlock Holmes was able, by winding up the dead man’s watch, to prove that it had been wound up two hours before, and that therefore the deceased had gone to bed within that time – a deduction which was of the greatest importance in clearing up the case.
*
From the second paragraph here: Short Stories: The Five Orange Pips by Arthur Conan Doyle
Although not a stopped clock case, this reminds me of a case of man convicted of murder in southern Ontario who spent several years in jail before being released. The details are hazy, but a girl went out to play, was murdered and then found very quickly. The mother had noted on her kitchen clock the time when she went out to play and when the body had been discovered. The defendant had an absolute alibi for that time interval. He was driving home from work and had not left early, so unless he had discovered teleportation, he could not have done it. The police (who knew and apparently disliked the defendant) convinced her that her kitchen had mysteriously lost twenty minutes and the just as mysteriously gained it back and was again reading correctly. So that instead of the daughter going out at 4:45, say, she had gone out at 5:05. She testified thus under oath without mentioning the detail of the clock having moved in mysterious ways. There must have been certain other evidence too, but the clock convicted him. The defendant had no way of knowing about this jumping clock and went to prison. Eventually, the whole story came out. I don’t think the actual murderer was ever caught.
I think Peter Morris’ explanation is most likely the correct one.
Even though I don’t know the percentage of watches made with a date or 24 hour function - based on what is available NOW on the market for antique watches - both of these are fairly rare. On almost all watches with the 24 hour function - they have a date function as well (as that is their TRUE function - to set time correctly so the date flips or clicks over at 12 midnight vs 12 noon). I don’t recall seeing these specifically for watches circa 1919, but the date function does exist - and appears to be relatively uncommon.
With a date function (even without the 24 hour part) - it would be possible to determine AM or PM based on turning the time forward to 12:00 - if the date clicks over - it was 3:30 pm - if not - it was AM.
Even without a date function - you could probably make some educated guesses to AM or PM based on the habits of the user and when he/she was last seen alive. All mechanical watches run for a relatively set period of time (for that watch). It 1919 - it was probably around 24 hours. If the person usually wound his watch at 9:00 am and the watch was “broken” at 3:30 - if they really wanted to (and didn’t mess with the watch) - a competent watch maker could figure out if there was 5 1/2 hours left on the watch or 17 1/2 hours. Some watches have a power reserve indicator that would make it immediately apparent - and while available in 1919 - they were relatively uncommon.
I recall an episode of one of those forensic/detective shows, where a man was murdered and his body was dumped in the ocean. The body still had the Rolex the victim was wearing when he was killed. Detectives contacted Rolex and found out how long that watch would run on its automatic movement. That allowed them to set the time of death pretty closely.
(IIRC, the damning evidence was GPS data that put the killer at the scene of the crime at the deduced time of the murder. But it’s been two or three years since I saw the episode, so I can’t recall with certainty.)
Addressing another issue in the column, I think rumors of the demise of clocks and watches is greatly exaggerated. It’s not always convenient or practical to pull your phone out of your pocket when you need to know the time. Even if nobody ever puts another clock in a public place, there are enough of them now in existence that people will always know what an analog clock looks like, and what the stoppage of its hands would imply in fiction.
Some of these outdoor or public clocks aren’t all that old, and it can be surprising where you find them, once you start looking.
Link
(Cropped from a Google SV image)
As a data point, I have a cell phone, but I also have an analog watch. As you note, it’s not always practical to pull my phone out of my pocket or purse, such as at work, where I’m not allowed to have my phone out, as well as social situations where it’s rude to look at the time, but where it’s easy enough to sneak a look at my watch.
Manson victim Steven Parent was at the Tate residence that night because he was trying to sell an electric alarm clock radio to William Garretson, the caretaker of the property. During the visit, he plugged in the clock, set the time to show Garretson how to use it, and unplugged it when he left. The police were able to use the time on the clock to determine the approximate time of the murders, but that didn’t solve anything.
Or, the second explanation in my post above his:
Oops - my bad :smack:
What I wonder about: One of the cases Cecil mentioned depended on a discrepancy of a mere 4 minutes. Now, even in this age of quartz-timed digital clocks, it’s still not unusual to encounter a clock that’s 5 minutes or more off, and I’d expect it to be even more so for analog clocks. How did the police rule out the possibility that the clock was just off?
Best username/post combination so far!
Dear Cecil,
I have always wondered how investigators know FOR SURE that the clock or wrist watch (in many cases) stopped EXACTLY at the time of death. I mean of course, in cases of assault leading to death there is a plausible (or semi-plausible) explanation how a watch would stop when the victim was attacked. But whats the guarantee that the watch was running to start with. In this day and age of high tech smart phones looking at the watch has become a rarity and most of the time the wrist watch that i wear is not even WORKING. It only serves ornamental purposes.
Most of the cases mentioned in the column happened when there were no smart phones. Even electric clocks were a rarity. Most people did depend on working wrist watches or pocket watches to keep them on time. Particularly in the 19th century and most of the 20th.
In most of these cases, “time of death” actually means “time of attack”, anyway.
As to the other point, yes, even in the 1950s, a cheap watch that you would give to a child would be accurate to within a couple of minutes per day, and, of course, people habitually reset their watches daily.
Since we’re a little threadjacked already, I have a watch from the 1930s and it is sometimes more useful than a phone because, worn with the face on the inside of my wrist, I can check how much time I have remaining in an interview by pretending to look at my notes–phones should all be off, not just silent, during taped interviews. I suppose this would be useful to the police if I made an interview subject so angry that he/she battered me to death…as well as camera, sound, and other crew.
Here’s an actual related question, if a person was carrying a cell phone which was broken during during his/her murder, would there be a record of the last time the phone checked in with a nearby tower, thus serving the same purpose as a smashed mechanical watch?
