Anglican priest and contact lens pioneer Michael Jaggs has died at the age of 77.
A tribute sent to Optician said his career in optics began with Leighton’s Opticians in 1954. He qualified as a dispensing optician and ran a branch for the company, before studying optometry at Northampton College four years later.
He met and shared a flat with fellow optometry student Nigel Wingate, who cut out an advert for somebody to train at Curry & Paxton to fit contact lenses. Jaggs applied and was successful, starting work at 22 Wigmore Street on the first week of January 1960, and sat his Association of Dispensing Opticians (ADO) Contact Lens exams in the summer of 1961.
While at Curry & Paxton, he started fitting lenses for the film industry, before starting up Contemporary Contact Lenses in Farnham in 1962. He started his own practice in Weymouth Street, London in 1969, buying the contact lenses records of Norman Bier in 1974.
He later set up Opticare Fitting Service to provide Clement Clarke and Melson Wingate practices. Contemporary Contact Lenses then became Optimedic to supply Opticare, and at its peak the firm was servicing 180 practices. He started making his own soft lenses in rooms by 1973 in London, before the soft lens lab moved to Farnham.
He was also the chairman of the ADO Contact Lens Study Group in 1977, and worked with the leaders of the Contact Lens Society, the Association of Contact Lens Practitioners and the Medical Contact Lens Association to form the British Contact Lens Association (BCLA).
In 1981 Syntex Ophthalmic acquired the Optimedic lens manufacturing facility and the Opticare Contact Lens fitting service, and the manufacturing side later became the specialist lens lab of CIBAVision.
In 1988-89 Jaggs agreed a deal with D&A and transformed his Weymouth Street practice into a joint venture practice within Keeler, Martin and Tompkins in Mortimer Street.
In 1995, he fulfilled what he felt was his calling, and was ordained a priest in the Church of England, reducing his contact lens fitting to two days per week at local hospitals and an optical practice.
He has also been chairman and treasurer of the Association of Contact Lens Manufacturers, president of European Federation of the Contact Lens Industry, and president and treasurer of BCLA.
