A Swiss silver pocket/stop watch presented by The Automobile Club on the occasion of the 1903 Gordon Bennett Cup in Ireland, by Stauffer Son & Co., th

A Swiss silver pocket/stop watch presented by The Automobile Club on the occasion of the 1903 Gordon Bennett Cup in Ireland, by Stauffer Son & Co., the rear case inscribed AUTOMOBILE CLUB, GORDON-BENNETT CUP RACE, IRELAND, 1903, the inside of the case further inscribed MRS. W. BIRTWISTLE, BILLINGE SCAR, BLACKBURN, movement running, enamel dial damaged James Gordon Bennett Jnr. (1841-1918) is perhaps best remembered for sending Stanley off to find Dr Livingstone in Africa, and for his name being adopted as an exclamation of surprise, a reference to his reputation for leading a hedonist, playboy lifestyle. Having taken over from his father as the publisher of the New York Herald, he financed a series of annual international motor races for the Gordon Bennett Cup from 1900 to 1905. Great Britain had won the event in 1902 courtesy of S.F. Edge driving a Napier and with it the right to host the following year's event in his native country. Racing at this time was conducted on closed public roads, but this was illegal in the British Isles. A special Act of Parliament was rushed through to allow a 103-mile circuit centred on Athy, just south-west of Dublin in Ireland, to be sanctioned for the 1903 Gordon Bennett Cup. As a tribute to the Emerald Isle, the host nation's team of cars were painted in what thereafter would always be referred to as 'British Racing Green'. Victory in the 1903 race went to the German team with Camille Jenatzy in a Mercedes averaging just over 49mph for the 328-mile race around the winding Irish lanes. This watch was presented on the occasion of the 1903 race by the Automobile Club to the wife of William Birtwistle, a wealthy cotton mills owner who lived in the Elizabethan mansion Billinge Scar, a five-acre estate near Blackburn. Typical of the Victorian and Edwardian industrial aristocracy, Birtwistle was a yachting, golfing and motor car enthusiast, whose servants numbered full time mechanics. As an aside, one of William's brothers Richard Birtwistle turned out for Blackburn Rovers FC when he wasn't too busy running the Roe Lee cotton mills, and even scored Rovers' opening goal in their 1884 F.A. Cup final win.