Daniel Radcliffe wears a Royal London Pocket Watch (stand-in)

In mourning black through The Woman in Black, Arthur Kipps carries two keepsakes of his dead wife: a curl of her blonde hair under a clear dome, and a plain silver pocket watch. The film was Daniel Radcliffe's first lead after Harry Potter, and it casts him as a young Edwardian solicitor and widowed father, four years after his wife Stella died. The year is 1906 when his firm sends him to a marsh village to settle a dead recluse's estate at Eel Marsh House, where a vengeful ghost drives the local children to their deaths.

The watch is a Royal London, a plain open-face piece in silver-plated metal: a white dial, black Roman numerals, and a small crown over the maker's name set across the center, Royal to the left of the hands and London to the right. Propstore sold the production's stand-in version in 2015 with a certificate of authenticity, kept in a Royal London gift box marked Stand In Watch, the matching locket of Stella's hair beside it. Royal London is a modern British brand, owned now by the Condor Group, whose pocket watches sell new for a little over a hundred pounds.

So the most personal thing Kipps owns, the keepsake the film leans on for his grief, is a watch the props team could buy new off the shelf. The one Propstore authenticated is not the hero but its stand-in, the double used when the real watch was not needed. Even the spare came apart: by Propstore's account the case is broken at the hinge, worn from handling on set.