Vincent was born in London. At age 21 he moved to South Africa where he worked on two farms in the Richmond district of the Natal Province. In the 1920s he went back to England where he became a bird collector for the British Museum in London. From the late 1920s to the early 1930s he accompanied Admiral Hubert Lynes on several ornithological expeditions to East Africa, Central Africa and Southern Africa. Most memorable was his travel to the Mount Namuli massif in Mozambique in 1932 where he discovered some bird taxa new to science including the Namuli apalis (Apalis lynesi) and the dapple-throat (Arcanator orostruthus). In 1934 he married the Scottish girl Mary Russell in Cape Town. In 1937 Vincent bought a farm in the Mooi River district of Natal.