INTRODUCTION

"The Livery's fascinating history reaches back many centuries but its work is as relevant today as ever……the livery companies continue to do what they have done for most of their history: they support, and in some case still regulate their trades; they help to educate and train young people; and they spend the income of which they are trustees to help people all over the world. The core of the Livery's ethos is timeless; fellowship, welfare, education, supporting trade and at all times working in the best interests of the communities in which they operate."

Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal

The Worshipful Company of Spectacle Makers (SMC) takes precedence as the 60th of the 107 livery companies of the City of London. In common with the other 106 companies, it exists to:

	- Promote its Craft. - Further Charitable enterprises. - Support the City of London. - Provide Fellowship for its members.

Its membership currently stands at nearly 400 Liverymen and over 1,000 Freemen.

377 years old, the SMC …..

......promotes assistance to the visually impaired by:

- rewarding excellence in academic research in the field of vision sciences. - conducting training and examination of those who make spectacle frames and lenses. - training and examining optical practice support staff. - sponsoring lectures on topics of both optical and more general scientific interest. - providing a forum in which members from all branches of the optical profession, trade, industry and   academia can meet to discuss matters of common interest in a relaxed and friendly atmosphere amidst   historic surroundings. - providing a valuable link between the optical world and the rest of society by encouraging membership from   other professions, trades and industries and giving all its members the opportunity to use their skills to   improve the quality of life for the visually impaired.

...... supports a wide range of charitable enterprises.

......offers its members the opportunity of involvement in the life and governance of the City of London.

......provides the opportunity for its members to cultivate new friendships, hobbies and interests, not least by organizing       high quality social functions for members and their guests both within and without the City of London.

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THE SPECTACLE MAKERS’
FIRST THREE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS

The Company’s name has become misleading, as its prime aim is to promote assistance to the visually impaired. It just so happens that, at the time of its foundation, the only known practical way of doing so was to provide sufferers with a pair of spectacles.

The origins of the craft of spectacle making are lost in the mists of time. No one knows for certain who first adapted lenses to assist vision. Most clues suggest that they first appeared in Europe in Italy towards the end of the thirteenth century. Although spectacle-making was not cited in the list of trades pursued in London as recorded by the Brewers’ Company in 1422, a pair of bone riveted spectacles was recovered during the course of excavations of a medieval refuse dump behind an old riverside wall at Trig Lane (EC4) in 1974. They have been dated to circa 1440.

The Trig Lane spectacles are similar in form to those depicted in continental paintings, and may have been imported from the Low Countries. It is recorded that in 1480 a significant quantity of spectacles were shipped from Holland to London, and a pair of bone rivet spectacles were found by an archaeologist working at Bergen op Zoom in 2001. It may well be, therefore, that those in Trig Lane were made by a spectacle maker from the Low Countries working in London, where the earliest recorded spectacle maker is one Paul van der Bessen of “Southwerk”, who was active in 1458/59. It can be no coincidence that his name suggests that he was a recent Dutch immigrant for, well into the seventeenth century, the Dutch were regarded as the leading producers in this field.

Having acquired their Charter, the Spectacle Makers of London quickly set about discharging the duty it imposed on them to “make laws, statutes, decrees, ordinances and constitution for the good rule” of the fellowship and its craft, within “our Realm of England”, and then enforcing them. So single-minded were they that they did not actually seek a grant of livery until 1809. Until that time, members of the Company were restricted to the grade of freeman.

Control was exercised by search. Officers of the Company would visit a shop and, if the wares were not up to standard laid down by the Company, they would take action against the miscreant in the Lord Mayor’s Court. If they proved their case there, the glasses would then be taken out and broken on London Stone. Thus a minute of 1671 records that:

“ … two and twenty dozen of English spectacles, all very badd both in the glasse and frames not fitt to be put on sale… were seized and taken away by the Master and the Wardens by vertue of the Charter of this Company and the Lord Maior’s Warrant and carryed to Guildhall and there in the Maior’s Court by a jury were found badd and deceitful and by judgement of the Court condemned to be broken, defaced and spoyled both glasse and frame the which judgement was executed accordingly in Canning Street on the remayning parte of London Stone where the same were with a hammer broken all in pieces.”

The Company continued to exercise this control until the advent of industrialization and mass manufacture rendered the antiquated restrictions and regulations of many, if not all, of the City livery companies unworkable. Perhaps it was the shock of seeing the old order swept away, coupled with an inability or unwillingness to recognize the forces now at work, that prevented the Company from grasping the new opportunities offered by the advances in medical and optical knowledge which allowed for a more detailed and complex eye examination. Whatever the cause, it was not until 1897 that the Company, prompted by the foundation of the British Optical Association (BOA) in 1895, decided to introduce its own examination for opticians. These were first held in November 1898, and examinations for sight testing were added in 1904. The Company also encouraged the study of optics through evening classes at the Northampton Polytechnic (now the City University), and paid the salary of the lecturer in visual optics. Separate examinations for dispensing opticians followed in 1956.

During the first half of the Twentieth Century, any person could practise as an optician, but it gradually became the norm to sit the examinations of either the BOA or the SMC first. These examining bodies remained to the fore of those seeking to raise the standards of professional education and conduct until that role was passed to the General Optical Council. This was established by the Opticians Act of 1958 to regulate the professions of both ophthalmic and dispensing opticians. Thenceforth no optician could practise unless registered to do so by the Council. Success in the SMC’s examinations was one method of securing such registration until, in 1979, the Company joined forces with the BOA and the Scottish Association of Opticians to found the British College of Ophthalmic Opticians (now the College of Optometrists) as the single examining body for ophthalmic opticians (nowadays termed “optometrists”).

Following the launch of the College, the BOA’s and the Company’s attention focused on their dispensing members, and in 1980 they set up the independent Faculty of Dispensing Opticians. This was never intended to be anything other than a stop-gap and, in due course, negotiations with the Association of Dispensing Opticians led to the establishment of the Association of British Dispensing Opticians (ABDO) in 1986.