The man who attempted to stop the woman sold time.

A member of the Belville family would make at least three weekly trips to the Royal Observatory at Greenwich for over a century. After setting a watch, he or she would travel around London to pitch that knowledge to their customers.
Ruth, the final time seller in Belville, had been collecting and selling time for over fifty years when she passed away in 1943.
However, St John Wynne, a rival, had attempted to destroy the business.
It backfired, and all he accomplished was grow Belville’s business.
In an attempt to steal clients for his own time-synchronization business, Wynne stated in a speech that was later printed in the Times that the Belville approach was “amusingly out of date”.