Dick (Richard) Smellie, or simply RS, was one of the
earliest contact lens fitters in the
UK. RS originally joined Hamblins aged 16, working as a junior medical artist
illustrating in colour diseases of the eye.He left to work for another optical firm but was enticed back a year or
so later. From about 1921
he worked with Hamblins at
31 New Cavendish Street
as a medical artist, making ocular prostheses and fitting contact lens. He used
Zeiss lenses which then had a delivery time of about six weeks.
After Dallos arrived in
London
during 1937, RS continued fitting lenses at the Hamblin Contact Lens Centre at 18 Cavendish Square, helping Dallos settle into his new role.
This was the first practice in the
UK
concerned solely with contact lenses.Bill
Shaw and Stephen Gordon from
Hungary
were also fitting lenses with Gordon working mainly at Hamblin's
Manchester
centre. After the closure of 18 Cavendish Square
in 1957 the Contact Lens Centre moved back to
31 New Cavendish Street
.
RS joined the board of Hamblins in October 1952 and became
managing director in 1958. By 1968 he had served the company for 50 years and
retired in May 1970. He joined Anne Silk in her practice, then in Upper Brook Street, where he helped produce artificial
eyes. He also helped train future artificial eye fitters at his home in Aldbury,
Hertfordshire.
He was a council member of the Contact Lens Society and
President in 1961-62.His
Presidential address "covering the past and present but more particularly the
future of contact lenses and those who prescribe and supply them, provoked more
discussion than such occasions usually prompt."The Dispensing Optician, 16,
no. 6 October/November 1961.
Dick Smellie's great-great-grand father was a printer in
Edinburgh, said to have introduced Robert Burns to Society and also involved with the
foundation of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
