The Empire Strikes Black

The British Empire. At its peak a great proportion of the globe was governed from our small island. 

In retrospect it was an era of great things and some less so. 

What were the peculiarly British attributes that enabled the nation to spread its influence to the four corners of the earth? 

Well, the obvious ones were the ability to muster a dominant military across ground and maritime forces that could mobilise to expand or protect territorial gains and the administrative and logistical skills that went with that. 

An equally significant factor was the availability of hot food and copious cups of tea to add substance to the well known saying that "an army marches on its stomach". 

A contributing bit of equipment was the Rippingille Cooking Stove. 

They were manufactured from around 1876 by Frank Sidebotham Rippingille and Henry Viliers Rippingille from premises in Aston, Birmingham in the English Midlands. 

The Cooking and Warming Stoves were of many sizes and styles but became an essential bit of kitchen and galley equipment for those stationed abroad on land and sea. It was for all of its widespread use hardly a portable appliance relying upon servants or good dependable transport to run it about across varied terrain and ocean currents. 

The model shown below measured, in metric terms, 38cm high, 43.5cm wide and 29.5cm deep.

Considering that the Number 3 Rippingille Stove, a particular favourite on board boats and yachts operated on petroleum or paraffin stored in the two large underslung tanks and had cast iron griddles and fittings the whole thing will have been very bulky and a dead weight. 

I like a description of this model in the 1903 espionage thriller, "Riddle of the Sands" by Erskine Childers when purchased in London by Carruthers on the request of the yachtsman Davies.

"At the Stores I asked for a No. 3 Rippingille stove, and was confronted with a formidable and hideous piece of ironmongery  horribly prophetic of a smell of warm oil. I paid for this miserably, convinced of its grim efficiency, but speculating as to the domestic conditions which caused it to be sent for as an afterthought by telegram"

During their halcyon trading days Rippingille's were always direct with the way they chose to advertise and they continued to associate their products with the global appeal of the Empire and its peoples. 

A famous graphic advert used the strapline of "Englands Gift- a blessing to all nations" and depicted many racial stereotypes in national costumes from the Americas to the Middle and Far East, china and Africa. 

A major promotional angle was the idea that Britain was the workshop of the world, and that the industrial power that Britain could bring to bear was to the benefit of all those who came into contact with it. 

Another motto was “You will do well to haste and try them, you can’t do better ‘cept to buy them”.

However, competition from other firms led to falling sales, and even the mortgage of the factory did little to prevent the downward spiral to bankruptcy. 

During December 1903 the Stove Works, plant, gas engines and stock in trade was offered for sale as a going concern but with no buyer coming forward the works were advertised for sale during March 1904. 

Perhaps the demise of such a symbol of organisation, tradition, dependability and function was a herald of similar to come for the wider British Empire in the rest of the 20^th Century.