JOSEPH FENWICK, circ. 1770.
Mores’ quaint account of this unlucky person is as follows:—“Mr. Joseph Fenwick was a locksmith, and worked as a journeyman in David Street in Oxford Road. Invited by an advertisement from Mr. Caslon for a smith who could file smooth and make a good screw, he applied, and is now mould-mender in ordinary to Mr. Caslon. But his ingenuity hath prompted him to greater things than a good screw. He hath cut a fount of Two-line Pica Scriptorial for a divine, the planner of the Statute at Plaisterers’ Hall for demising and to farm letting servants of both sexes and all services. Of him Mr. Caslon required an enormous sum when he thought that nobody could do the work but himself. Mr. Fenwick succeeded at a very moderate expence; for he has not been paid for his labour. The plausible design of the fount was the relief and ease of our rural vineyarders, and the service of those churches in which the galleries overlook the pulpit.” In the synopsis of founts given at the end of Mores’ book, Fenwick’s Scriptorial, or Cursive, is mentioned as being at that time (1778) obtainable.
T. RICHARDS, 1778.
Mores says he lived near Hungerford Bridge, and called himself letter founder and toyman; but appeared to be an instrument maker for marking the shirts of soldiers “to prevent plunder in times of peace.” “But we have seen no specimen,” he adds, “either on paper or on rags.”
McPHAIL, 1778.
Mores describes him as a Scotchman without address. “It is said that he hath cut two full-faced founts, one of Two-line English, the other of Two-line Small Pica; hath made the moulds, and casts the letter his self. If this be true {352} (and we have reason to believe it is not altogether false) he must travel like the circumforanean printers of names from door to door soon after the invention of the art, with all the apparatus in a pack upon his shoulders; for he is a nullibiquarian, and we cannot find his founding house.” To this account Hansard adds in 1825:—“I have reason to believe that, some years ago, the foundry of McPhail, which Mores has commemorated by a most humorous paragraph, was carried on either by the same individual or a descendant; but it continues to be screened from observation by the same cloud which obscured it from the curiosity of that illustrious typographical historian.”