Michael Jaggs

When Michael left school at 16 he already had a place at medical school lined up but they didn’t want him before 18 years of age. The medical school suggested he study some chemistry and suggested getting some experience in or around hospital or allied medical field. He didn’t like being a dental technician or a hospital porter but managed to secure, through family connections, a place with Leighton’s Opticians in 1954. He qualified as a dispensing optician and ran a branch for them, but left in 1958 to go to Northampton College to study optometry. Here he met, and shared a flat with, Nigel Wingate.

A crisis point came as Michael knew that if he was going to take up the position at medical school he would want to go into ophthalmic surgery which would take even longer. Nigel Wingate cut out an advert from Dispensing Optician for somebody to train at Curry & Paxton to fit contact lenses. Michael applied and was successful, starting work at 22 Wigmore Street on the first week of January 1960. In May 1960 he was sent to work with Tony Orpen Palmer at the Contact Lens Centre, part of Obrig’s UK, in Wilton Crescent. This was one of the few training establishments for contact lens fitting. Here he met Don Ezekiel from Australia, the only other student on the course. He sat his ADO Contact Lens exams in the summer of 1961.

Whilst at Curry & Paxton he started fitting lenses for the film industry, initially for Hammer films, but later fitting lenses for all the “apes” in the film Greystoke. He must have been very successful as he bought Turnpike Field House in Farnham from Tony Orpen Palmer’s uncle in 1963 when he was still only 25!

He started Contemporary Contact Lenses in Farnham in 1962 as he had difficulty in getting lenses of the quality he wanted. He started his own practice in Weymouth Street, London in 1969, buying the contact lenses records of Norman Bier in 1974.

In 1970 Clement Clarke and Melson Wingate were finding that their contact lens fitting service was uneconomic due to poor coverage and insufficient use. Jaggs set up the Opticare Fitting Service to take over this work, giving a better geographic coverage. Contemporary Contact Lenses became Optimedic to supply Opticare. At its peak the firm was servicing 180 practices from Bristol Channel to the Wash, a dispensing optician version of Kelvin’s.

Michael helped John deCarle with the development of the Permalens extended wear soft lens in 1971 and started making his own soft lenses in rooms in Welbeck Street, London, in 1973. Michael’s soft lens lab later moved to Farnham where Michael helped John deCarle with his soft bifocal lens designs.

In 1981 Syntex Ophthalmic acquired the Optimedic lens manufacturing facility and the Opticare Contact Lens fitting service. Opticare collapsed about 18 months after the Syntex take-over, but the manufacturing side, Optimedic, continued to prosper, being bought by Wesley-Jessen PBH, later becoming the specialist lens lab of CIBAVision.

In 1988-89 Michael did a deal with D&A and transformed his Weymouth Street practice into a joint venture practice within Keeler, Martin and Tompkins in Mortimer Street. Later this moved to the Curry & Paxton practice in Wigmore Street. When this folded in 1996-7 Michael was bought out by D&A and the practice was sited within Theodore Hamblin’s in Wigmore Street, now part of the Boots empire.

In 1995 Michael got his wish and was ordained priest in the Church of England, reducing his contact lens fitting to 2 days per week at 22a Harley Street, the contact lens clinic at Salisbury hospital which he started in 1964, and a small hospital in Farnham. Occasionally he fitted for a friend at a D&A franchise in Southampton.

Around 1977 Michael was the chairman of the Association of Dispensing Opticians (ADO) Contact Lens Study Group. He 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) which brought together optometrists, ophthalmologists, contact lens opticians and manufacturers.

Michael Jaggs has been Chairman and Treasurer of the Association of Contact Lens Manufacturers, President of European Federation of the Contact Lens Industry, President (1986-87) and Treasurer of BCLA, Chairman of ADO Contact Lens Study Group and Chairman of ABDO Contact Lens Committee. He was a Contact Lens Practical Examiner of Association of British Dispensing Opticians, Liveryman and Chaplain of the Worshipful Company of Spectacle Makers, a practice visitor, worked with the Fitness to Practice committee and authored a booklet on fitting scleral lenses.

In 2013 and 2014 Michael hosted contact lens reunion lunches at the Carlton Club.