Best known as the publisher of Icones Ornithopterorum (1898-1906), the first monograph on bird wing butterflies, but he also interested himself in other insects, molluscs and minerals. His insect collection amounting to 105,765 specimens, of which 56,828 are Coleoptera, is in the NMW. There is a good account of Rippon by Ashley Kirk-Spriggs in Archives of Natural History 22(1), 1995, pp.97-118. He was born in Bocking, Essex and appears to have started his professional life as a ‘Professor of Musick’ and he published some light songs and piano music. But it is clear that he was already interested in insects because in 1861 he advertised in EWI for funding to support a collecting trip to South America. This took place after March 1861 but before June 1862 when he set off for the Near East also with the intention of collecting insects for his sponsors. In 1864 he published a book Victor; or lessons of Life. A Tale founded on fact which was based on his travels and in which he describes Victor collecting beetles. A further expedition, to Algeria in c.1870, is documented in a letter he wrote to E.W.Janson now in the NHM. By 1871 Rippon was living in Cambridge and had become friendly with G.R.Crotch whose Catalogue of Coccinellidae he proof read and saw through the printers for Crotch while the latter was in America, By c.1877 he had moved to Brockley in South London and was making a living as an illustrator. The books he worked on included Godman and Salvin’s Biologia Centrali-Americana for which he produced plates of butterflies, beetles and Hemiptera. Later still (August 1909) he appears to have been living in Accrington, because a letter to E.W.Janson in the NHM mentions that he wanted to purchase cabinets for the entomological collection of his ‘friend’ J.W.Rimington which was housed in the Museum there. By the time of his death he was resident in Upper Norwood. Much of Rippon’s Coleoptera collections appear to have been acquired at auction As a result they include many specimens from other collectors which arelisted in detail by Kirke-Spriggs, pp.115-16 including A.R.Wallace, T.V.Wollaston. and C.Darwin and many foreign collectors. In 1910 Rippon appears to have been in financial difficulties, without a pension, and offered his collection of 106,000 insects, shells and minerals from most parts of the world for sale. He cannot have found a buyer however for it was eventually purchased by Lord Rhondda for a sum believed to be in excess of £1,000 from his widow. Rhondda then donated it to the NMW . According to an article by Adrian Amsden in Biological Curator’s Newsletter, 2(8), September 1980, the collection ‘must have contained a multitude of un-described species from Australia and South America but as there was no-one to curate it in Cardiff it remained almost undisturbed for the next fifty years. It presented the staff of the Department of Zoology with an insuperable problem and the cabinets and store boxes were moved from place to place but seldom opened. It is still relatively untouched but as cabinets and store boxes disintegrated much of it has been transferred to new storage in the last ten years....’ (MD 11/04)
Dates
1836 – 16 January 1917