

A concise history of the McCabe family by Paul Hackamack can be found in Antiquarian Horology, No. 3, Vol. 10, Summer 1977, pp. 308-316. James McCabe was born c. 1748 in Ireland near to Belfast and moved to London in 1775. The firm is recorded at Fleet Street, Cheapside and the Royal Exchange. In 1781, McCabe was made a Freeman of the Clockmakers’ Company, later becoming a Warden. James died in 1811 and the firm was continued by his youngest son Robert. Robert died in 1860 and, in turn, his eldest son, Robert Jeremy McCabe, continued the family business until he closed it in 1879/80. Robert Jeremy appears to have spent the remainder of his life as “a man of independent means” and died in 1902 [op. cit. p. 309].