Thomas Firmin
English businessman
Thomas Firmin (June 1632 – 1697) was an English businessman and philanthropist, publisher and unitarian member of the Church of England.
Early life
Firmin was born to Puritan parents, Henry and Prudence Firmin in Ipswich. Henry Firmin was a parishioner of Samuel Ward, the Puritan incumbent of St. Mary-le-Tower, by whom in 1635 he was accused of erroneous tenets. Thomas Firmin as a young man sent to London and apprenticed to a girdler and mercer who attended the services of John Goodwin at St Stephen Coleman Street; he took down Goodwin's sermons in shorthand.
Setting up in business on his own, in Lombard Street, he met generally latitudinarian Anglicans (Whichcote, John Worthington, John Wilkins, Edward Fowler, and Edward Tillotson). He also became acquainted with John Biddle, who would become an important practical influence. He married in 1660.
Philanthropy and the linen workhouse
Firmin's first philanthropic experiment was occasioned by the trade disorganisation in 1665, the year of the Great Plague. He provided employment at making up clothing for hands thrown out of work.
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This entry incorporates text from “Thomas Firmin” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.