R. Watts Explained

Richard Watts (died 24 March 1844) was an early nineteenth-century English printer, located in Crown Court, Temple Bar, London. His work is identified under the signature R. Watts.^[1]

Watts was the printer for the University of Cambridge from 1802 until 1809,^[2] (a switch to stenotype was made by the school in 1804). He left Cambridge in 1809 and set up a printing workshop in Broxbourne, subsequently setting up the Oriental Type-Foundry on Temple Bar, London, in 1816.

Watts developed a reputation as "a cutter and founder of Oriental and foreign characters, of which he accumulated a considerable collection".^[3] His Oriental Type-Foundry was also the oriental printer for the Church Missionary Society, the Bible Society, the Prayer Book Society, and the Homily Society.

Watts's son, William Mavor Watts (1797/98-1874), took over the printing business in Crown Court, Temple Bar.^[4]

Watts died age 70 and is buried in All Saints' Church, Edmonton.

Apprentices to Richard Watts

• Richard Clay I (1789-1877), was apprenticed to Richard Watts in 1803. His son, Charles John Clay, was printer to the University of Cambridge between 1854–1882.^[5]
• Mirza Salih was apprenticed to Watts in 1819.^[6]
• Sullivan (Sulman) Law Hyder, was apprenticed to Watts for five years in the 1820s before going to work as a printer in Calcutta in 1931.^[6]
• William Colenso was apprenticed to Watts in 1833.

Further reading

• Nile Green, Terrains of Exchange: Religious economies of global Islam (Oxford University Press, 2014), especially Chapter 2: The Christian Origins of Muslim Printing.

Notes and References

1. Book: Reply of R. Watts to the Report of Dr. Milner and Mr. Wood relative to the University Press affairs. T. Gillet. 1809. Google Books.
2. Book: https://books.google.com/books?id=SZxeAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA245. Public Buildings. History of the University of Cambridge. Illustrated by a series of engravings ... from drawings by R. B. Harraden, Jun.. 2d. R. Harraden & Son . 1814. 245. Google Books.
3. Talbot Baines Reed, A History of the Old English Letter Foundries, 1887 (reprint Outlook Verlag, 2018.
4. Georg Lehner, Der Druck chinesischer Zeichen in Europa - entwicklungen im 19. Jahrhundert (Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, 2004), p. 214.
5. Michael Black, Cambridge University Press 1584-1984 (Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 152.
6. Nile Green, "Terrains of Exchange: Religious economies of global Islam" (Oxford University Press, 2014), Chapter 2: The Christian Origins of Muslim Printing.