Joseph Fry

Who was Joseph Fry?

Joseph Fry, was an English type-founder and chocolate maker and founder of the Bristol branch of the Quaker Fry family

He was the eldest son of John Fry of Sutton Benger, Wiltshire, author of ‘Select Poems,’ 1774, 4th edition, 1793. He was educated in the north of England, and afterwards bound apprentice to Henry Portsmouth of Basingstoke, an eminent doctor, whose eldest daughter, Anna, he afterwards married. He was the first member of his family to settle in Bristol, where he acquired a considerable medical practice, and ‘was led to take a part in many new scientific undertakings’.

After a time he abandoned medicine for business pursuits. He helped Richard Champion in his Bristol china works, and began to make chocolate, having purchased Walter Churchman's patent right. The chocolate and cocoa manufactory thus started has been carried on by the family down to the early twentieth century. The success of John Baskerville caused Fry to turn his attention in 1764 to type-founding, and he entered into partnership with William Pine, the first printer of the ‘Bristol Gazette,’ who had a large business in Wine Street. Their new type may be traced in several works issued between 1764 and 1770. The manager of Messrs. Fry & Pine was Isaac Moore, formerly a whitesmith at Birmingham, after whose speedy admission to partnership the business was removed to London, and carried on as ‘Isaac Moore & Co., in Queen Street, near Upper Moorfields.’ Luckombe mentions Moore as one of three London founders. In 1774 the London firm produced a fine folio bible, and in 1774–1776 a well-printed edition in 5 vols., 8vo. About this time they somewhat abandoned their earlier Baskerville style of letter, to follow the more popular Caslon character.