apparatus, in partnership with his eldest brother. In 1852 the partnership was dissolved (the publishing branch being continued by his nephew as Charles Griffin & Co.), and J. J. Griffin established the firm of chemical apparatus dealers (J. J. Griffin & Sons of 22 Garrick Street, Covent Garden), which is still successfully carried on. Griffin died at his residence, Park Road, Haverstock Hill, on 9 June 1877. He received his training in chemistry in early life at Paris and at Heidelberg. While still a young man he published a translation of Heinrich Rose's ‘Handbuch der analytischen Chemie.’ While in the publishing trade Griffin, who was a man of wide culture, partly edited the ‘Encyclopædia Metropolitana,’ of which his firm were the publishers. Griffin assisted in the foundation of the Chemical Society in 1840, and throughout his life he was earnest in his attempts to popularise the study of chemistry. He devised many new and simple forms of chemical apparatus, and did much in introducing scientific methods into commercial processes. He wrote several books connected with chemistry, including ‘Chemical Recreations’ (1834), ‘Treatise on the Blow-pipe,’ ‘System of Crystallography’ (1841), ‘The Radical Theory in Chemistry’ (1858), ‘Centigrade Testing as applied to the Arts,’ ‘The Chemical Testing of Wines and Spirits’ (1866 and 1872), and ‘Chemical Handicraft’ (1866 and 1877). Nine papers from his pen appeared in various scientific periodicals. Of these the first was ‘On a New Method of Crystallographic Notation;’ ‘Report British Association,’ 1840, p. 88; and the last ‘A Description of a Patent Blast Gas Furnace,’ Chemical News,' 1860, pp. 27, 40.
[Journal Chem. Soc. for 1878, xxxiii. 229; Royal Society's Cat. of Scientific Papers; information furnished by relatives.]
GRIFFIN, THOMAS (1706?–1771), organ-builder and Gresham professor of music, was the son of a wharfinger. He was apprenticed on 5 July 1720 to George Dennis, a barber, for seven years; was admitted ‘by servitude’ on 4 Feb. 1729 to the freedom, and on 6 March 1733 to the livery of the Barber-Surgeons' Company. He was entered at that date in the company's books as a ‘barber’ of Fenchurch Street (cf. Hawkins, History of Music, iii. 907). After 1751 he is described as an organ-builder, still of Fenchurch Street. Among the organs for city churches said to have been erected by Griffin is that of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, built in 1741. Griffin was one of the Gresham committee, and succeeded Gardner, on 11 June 1763, as professor of music to the college. The performance of his duties, however, was too severe a tax upon his musical learning, and the newspapers of the time report his repeated failures as a lecturer (see also Grove, i. 631). He died on 29 April 1771, leaving property to his two sisters.
[Gent. Mag. 1771, p. 239; Registers of Wills, P.C.C. 206, Trevor; authorities quoted above; valuable information kindly supplied by Mr. Sidney Young, clerk to the Barber-Surgeons' Company.]
GRIFFIN, THOMAS (d. 1771), admiral, said to have belonged to a younger branch of the family of Lord Griffin of Braybrooke, which merged in that of Lord Howard of Walden. He is described as of the parish of Dixton Hadnock in Monmouthshire (Lists of Members of Parliament, Arundel, 1754). He entered the navy about 1711, and on 28 Oct, 1718 was promoted by Sir George Byng to be a lieutenant of the Orford. In July 1730 he was appointed first lieutenant of the Falmouth with Captain John Byng; and on 1 April 1731 was promoted to be captain of the Shoreham frigate, which he commanded for two years in the West Indies and on the coast of Carolina, and paid off in March 1733. In 1735 he commanded the Blenheim, guardship at Portsmouth, and bearine the flag of Vice-admiral Cavendish, and in 1738-1739, commanded the Oxford in the Channel. In 1740 he was appointed to the Princess Caroline, which went out to the West Indies in the fleet under Sir Chaloner Ogle. At Jamaica, Vernon hoisted his flag on board the Princess Caroline, and Griffin was moved into the Burford, Vernon's former flagship. He commanded the Burford in the unsuccessful attack on Cartagena, March-April 1741 [see Vernon, Edward], and is mentioned as having cleared the passage into the inner harbour by removing a ship which had been sunk in the entrance. In the followmg September he took the Burford to England, and was afterwards involved in a series of unpleasant quarrels with his officers, whom he had turned out of their cabins in order to accomodate some passengers whom he brought from Jamaica. The officers, naturally enough, now complained of this treatment, alleging that Griffin had been ‘pretty well paid for it.’ Griffin denied this, maintaining that what he had done was in accordance with the custom of the service, and retaliated by charging his officers with being ‘a drinking, disorderly set’ (Captains' Letters, September 1741). The affair seems to have been smoothed over, at any rate as far as Griffin was concerned, and he was appointed to the Nassau guardship at Portsmouth, from which he exchanged into the St. George, and com-
