R. Watts

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).^[2] 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.