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William Callaghan (1817–1874) was an optician from London, England. He worked for Thomas P. Harris, and the 1841 Census lists him as an optician’s apprentice in Harris’s household. By 1845, he was trading at 45 Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury. He sold spectacles, octants, telescopes, perspective glasses, and microscopes, as well as opera, marine, field, and race glasses. Callaghan advertised himself as the sole agent for Voigtländer opera glasses and race glasses, and during the 1860s, he also represented Voigtländer portrait and landscape photographic lenses.
In 1855, he announced in The Times that he had relocated to 23a New Bond Street, where he conducted business until his death in 1874. After his death, the business was inherited by his son, William Edmund Callaghan (c.1853–1890), who in 1875 obtained freedom from the Spectacle Makers’ Company by purchase. He continued his father’s business, and by 1877, the company was advertising under the name Callaghan & Co. His son, Edmund Ford Callaghan (c.1880–1946), was also a manufacturer and dealer in optical instruments and continued the business at 23a New Bond Street until at least 1909.
