Vincent Figgins


Vincent Figgins was a British typefounder based in London, who cast and sold metal type for printing. After an apprenticeship with typefounder Joseph Jackson, he established his own type foundry in 1792. His company was extremely successful and, with its range of modern serif faces and display typefaces, had a strong influence on the styles of British printing in the nineteenth century. A successor company continued to make type until the 1970s.
Figgins introduced or popularised both slab-serif and sans-serif typefaces, which have since become two of the main genres of typeface. He was also involved in local politics as a Councilman of the City of London.

Family and early life

The son of a bookkeeper, Figgins was born in 1766 and started his career as an apprentice to the typefounder Joseph Jackson. He worked for Jackson from 1782 until Jackson's death in 1792. According to Talbot Baines Reed, Figgins was largely the manager of Jackson's foundry from about 1790 onwards due to Jackson's poor health.
His wife was Elizabeth and he had sons Vincent, James, later an alderman and MP, Henry and four daughters.

Career

The main historical sources for Figgins' career are:
  • the specimens he issued of the typefaces that he sold, which were first sheets and later books as his business expanded.
  • Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, by his friend and patron the antiquarian and printer John Nichols
  • Thomas Curson Hansard's textbook on printing Typographia, published towards the end of Figgins' career
  • A History of The Old English Letter Foundries by Talbot Baines Reed, who knew Figgins' grandson
On Jackson's death, Figgins wanted to take the foundry over but could not afford to; it was instead purchased by William Caslon III. A member of the prominent Caslon typefounding family, he was seeking to set up a foundry independent of the Caslon foundry established by his grandfather William Caslon I.
John Nichols, who believed in Figgins' talent, encouraged Figgins to open his own foundry.
Figgins would many years later write to Nichols to thank him for his generosity during the beginning of his career:
I am greatly obliged to you for the very flattering mention of my name, but you have not done yourself the justice to record your own kindness to me: that, on Mr. Jackson's death, finding I had not the means to purchase the foundry, you encouraged me to make a beginning. You gave me large orders and assisted me with the means of executing them; and during a long and difficult struggle in pecuniary matters for fifteen years, you, my dear Sir, never refused me your assistance, without which I must have given it up. Do mention this—that, as the first Mr. Bowyer was the means of establishing Mr. Caslon—his son, Mr. Jackson—it may be known that Vincent Figgins owes his prosperity to Mr. Bowyer's successor.

Figgins' foundry was established at White Swan Yard, Holborn, moving in 1801 to West Street, Smithfield. He was also commissioned by Oxford University Press for work such as carefully repairing matrices for a sixteenth-century Greek typeface.
An early commission was to make a facsimile type for Macklin's Bible, commissioned by Thomas Bensley. The original type for the book was cut by Jackson, and Bensley decided to buy new type which matched the original. Instead of going to Caslon, who had Jackson's matrices, he asked Figgins. Figgins was able to make a perfect recreation of the type. He then worked on a similar job to finish the Double Pica type in Robert Bowyer’s edition of David Hume's The History of England which was being worked on by Jackson at the time of his death. Another early client was the luxury printer Peltro William Tomkins. In 1793, Figgins was one of the major type founders in London who formed an association with the goal of functioning as a cartel for price fixing.
Figgins' company issued specimens of his types from 1793, first as sheets and later in book form. Examination of watermarks indicates that Figgins continued to use a dated title page for some years while changing the content of the book, so these were often later than the title page date. His sons also issued a specimen in 1838, soon after taking over management on Figgins' retirement, and in 1845. Berthold Wolpe edited a reprint of his 1801 and 1815 specimens published by the Printing Historical Society.
According to Nichols' son John Bowyer Nichols, Figgins was "an amiable and worthy man, and was generally respected."

Employees

Perhaps the strangest aspect of Figgins' career was its beginning, in which one of his tasks was to finish a Greek type begun by Jackson for Oxford University Press. Typefaces at this time were made by cutting the letterforms to be printed as steel punches. This was done by a punchcutter, a skilled engraver. Vincent Figgins II in 1855 wrote that his father's career began in this way:
The mystery thrown over the operations of a Type-foundry, within my own recollection, and the still greater secrecy which had existed in my father's experience, testifies that the art had been perpetuated by a kind of Druidic or Masonic induction from the first. An anecdote of my father's early struggles may illustrate this. At the death of Mr. Joseph Jackson, whom my father had served ten years as apprentice and foreman, there was in progress for the University Press of Oxford a new fount of Double Pica Greek, which had progressed under my father's entire management. The then delegates of that Press – the Rev. Dr. Randolph and the Rev. W. Jackson – suggested that Mr Figgins should finish the fount himself. This, with other offers of support from those who had previously known him, was the germ of his prosperity. But when he had undertaken this work, the difficulty presented itself that he did not know where to find the punch-cutter. No one knew his address; but he was supposed to be a tall man, who came in a mysterious way occasionally, whose name no one knew, but he went by the sobriquet of 'The Black Man'. This old gentleman, a very clever mechanic, lived to be a pensioner on my father's bounty—gratitude is perhaps the better word. I knew him and could never understand the origin of his sobriquet, unless Black was meant for dark, mysterious, from the manner of his coming and going from Mr. Jackson's foundry.

Wolpe investigated the topic of Figgins' punchcutters in the 1960s, finding that the Stephenson Blake foundry of Sheffield had a copy of his c. 1815 specimen with annotations noting the cutters of some types in pencil, suggesting that Figgins often commissioned work from two punchcutters about whom little is known named Perry and Edmonston. Wolpe noted that a Perry also cut a type for the Caslon foundry and suggested that Edmonston, who lived at Alfred Place, Cambridge Heath, is the same man as the punchcutter recorded as Edmiston who cut an extremely small 4.5pt Greek type for the Caslon foundry, known from 1828, according to Bowman "so small that its clarity is remarkable". Wolpe concluded, however, that "who the mysterious 'Black Man'...was, we may never be able to find out."
John H. Bowman in his research on the history of printing Greek in Britain concluded that Figgins' account did not match Figgins or OUP's known Greek types: "I have not found anything answering its description. It may be that it is a mistake or indeed perhaps the difficulties of finding "the Black Man" were such that the type was never completed. I do not believe it can be the Double Pica that appears in Figgins' later specimens , for the style of that type would have been impossible at this early date."
A Charles Perry is documented in news articles of the late 1820s as a punchcutter for Figgins. His career was halted by tragedy: on 6 December 1829, drunk and arguing with his common-law wife, he threw an iron at her and hit their son who was in his mother's arms, breaking his son's skull and killing him. He received a year's imprisonment.
During a court case involving a theft in 1821, an employee of Figgins reported that "we have from twenty to thirty workmen."

Politics

Besides his business career, Figgins was a Common Councilman for the ward of Farringdon Without of the City of London.
In 1828 the Radical candidate Henry Hunt and journalist William Cobbett ran in a heavily publicised campaign in the multi-candidate seat of Farringdon Without, running on a campaign of investigating how the City's funds were used. Cobbett's Political Register reported a rowdy meeting on 26 December 1828 which degenerated into arguments, stating that Hunt, after first conceding that rumours that he had left his wife for another woman were true, said :
His opponent, Mr Figgins it was a constant practice to sing songs of the most beastly and indecent description...songs that would almost make humanity shudder and yet these songs were allowed and applauded, and his opponent, Mr. Figgins, sat and laughed at them until his old rotten teeth almost dropped out of his head. He had heard that songs were sung at these houses that would not be tolerated by the lowest prostitutes that visited the Finish...
Mr. Figgins never appeared before them with so much pleasure. It was an honour to him to have the abuse of this shameless fellow. After some considerable time, he proceeded, and accused Mr. Hunt of having turned away his own wife, and of having seduced the wife of Colonel Vince.– Mr. Hunt was infirm in talent as in virtue, and would they think of sending a detestable adulterer to represent them?...
Mr. Hunt as to Mr. Figgins' attack regarding the female alluded to, it was a mere cowardly attack on a woman.
Mr. Figgins asked if it were not true!
Mr. Hunt replied that such a question was never put in any other Court than the Spanish Inquisition. As to Mr. Figgins ever being guilty of such an offence–why no man would ever suspect him; the very appearance of the man was a denial to the charge.

The article reported that "a good deal more personal altercation" followed.
Ultimately Cobbett withdrew before the election and Hunt lost; Cobbett's contemporary biographer Robert Huish claimed that "from the beginning of the meeting to the end it was one tissue of abuse uttered against Hunt and Cobbett received from the two sturdy radicals some heavy blows...it is scarcely necessary to remark that neither of the radicals was successful...Mr. Hunt soon saw that he was no great favourite with the good people of that part of the city." Figgins came eighth in the poll and was one of the sixteen elected out of eighteen candidates; Hunt came last. Hunt's campaign attracted considerable attention, and a book was published the following year anthologising the events of the campaign "which has excited considerable interest in the public mind of the City."
Figgins also reportedly advised in a meeting of 4 October 1827 against sending nightwatchmen out on patrol and supported the traditional approach that they waited in watchboxes, because :
if the watchman goes to sleep in his box, when you want him you know where to find him, but on the altered plan proposed, in case of an accident, there would be to seek him through half the public-houses in the ward

In 1829 William Heath published a cartoon, "The charleys in grief or the funeral of the city watch boxe's" showing a procession of nightwatchmen protesting against the change with a banner of "Figgins for ever".