From around the 1920s, it became the custom of the two brothers to take turns running the business and taking leisurely furloughs in England. Freddy’s wife Alcidie joked that the company name should be changed to "Home Ringer" because one of the brothers was always back home.
While in England, Sydney and his wife Aileen and two sons Michael and Vanya rented Sutherland Lodge, a country manor on the edge of the North York Moors. Constructed of Yorkshire sandstone with a Welsh slate roof, the grand Victorian house boasted nine bedrooms, a crenellated watchtower and several outbuildings including a coach house, storage rooms and servants’ quarters, all set in seven acres of pristine pasture and woodland.
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| An early photograph of Sutherland Lodge |
Although the Ringer women may have thought differently, this pastoral location was ideal for Sydney and his many guests because it allowed them to indulge freely in their favorite pastime, namely bird hunting. Family photographs capture Sydney and his sons relaxing with friends at the gothic door of Sutherland Lodge, apparently prepared for hunting excursions to the woods nearby. Other photographs show the young brothers sitting on the stone steps on the slope in front of the building. Both the stairs and the door remain intact to this day, whispering forgotten tales of the Ringer family sojourn.
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| With friends at the door of Sutherland Lodge (from right: Vanya, Michael and Sydney Ringer) |
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| Vanya (left) and Michael on the steps in front of Sutherland Lodge |
In 1936, Sydney and Aileen Ringer and their two sons, now 21 and 19 years old, respectively, made their last trip to England to holiday at Sutherland Lodge, traveling east across the Pacific Ocean on a Canadian Pacific Railway Co. steamer, traversing the vast expanses of Canada on the CPR transcontinental route from Vancouver to Montreal, and boarding another steamer for the trans-Atlantic voyage to Liverpool.
During the stay at Sutherland Lodge, Vanya met and fell in love with Prunella Frank, the daughter of a prominent family in Pickering, only a few miles from the Ringer family retreat. By accepting Vanya’s marriage proposal, Prunella swam bravely against the current, agreeing to come to Japan at a time when the drums of war were pounding loudly and the employees of foreign companies, businesses and consulates were busy buying tickets to sail in the opposite direction.
The wedding ceremony was convened at the Nagasaki British Consulate in January 1937 and followed by a celebration in the family house attended by dozens of foreign and Japanese guests. Photographs taken at the time show the newlyweds posing beside a Christmas tree left intact for the occasion and friends mingling with glasses in hand near tables strewn with wedding gifts. This Ringer wedding reception was to be the last of the grand parties held on the Minamiyamate hillside since the early years of the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement.
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| Vanya and Prunella Ringer, Nagasaki 1937 |
The foreign population of Nagasaki dwindled after the outbreak of war between Japan and China in July 1937. The rosters in the Chronicle and Directory reveal the exodus of Westerners in the last years of the decade: many foreign businesses are listed as closed, and the Euro-American community, once numbering several hundred, is comprised of a tiny band of American and French missionaries and a few brave employees of companies such as the Standard-Vacuum Oil Co. and Great Northern Telegraph Co. In late 1939, only three foreigners remained in the employ of Holme, Ringer & Co.: Sydney Ringer and his two sons.
By early 1940, Holme, Ringer & Co. and other foreign enterprises were facing pressure to close down and leave Japan. On July 27, Vanya Ringer was taken into custody by the Japanese military police as he set out to visit the Empress of Russia, which had called at Nagasaki on its regular voyage from Hong Kong to Vancouver. Michael Ringer was detained in Shimonoseki the same day, as were several other British businessmen accused of participating in a spy ring. The Nagasaki District Court did not bring Vanya to trial until September 17, nearly two months after his arrest. The judge hearing the case imposed a fine of 150 yen and eighteen months of penal servitude, with a five-year stay of execution, on the grounds that Vanya had asked someone about the name of a ship anchored in Nagasaki Harbor and thus violated the New Military Secrets Protection Law. The court also found him guilty of illegally storing 1,500 shotgun shells in one of the company warehouses. The confiscation of the shells brought an abrupt and ironic end to the sport of bird hunting pursued so avidly by Frederick Ringer and his descendants since the early years of the foreign settlement. In Shimonoseki, Michael Ringer was found guilty of similar charges and sentenced to 14 months of penal servitude and a fine of 120 yen. The charges were tantamount to an order to quit Japan.
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| The Ringer family in front of their private residence in Shimonoseki circa spring 1940 (from left: Sydney, Aileen, Vanya, Elizabeth, Prunella and Michael) |
Vanya was now the father of a three-year-old daughter named Elizabeth Sutherland Ringer, the middle name gleaned from Sutherland Lodge where Vanya and Prunella had met and fallen in love. The family assembled in the house at No. 2 Minamiyamate to discuss their alternatives. This was to be the last, and the saddest, gathering of the Ringer family in Japan. On September 29, 1940, two days after Germany, Italy and Japan signed the Tripartite Pact and formalized the Axis Powers, the Ringer brothers left Nagasaki for China and traveled to India to undergo training as cadets in the British Indian Army, Michael as an intelligence officer and Vanya as a lieutenant in the elite Punjab Regiment. Prunella and Elizabeth accompanied Vanya and stayed with him at camps in India, Burma and Malaya until he was called to duty.
Vanya bid farewell to his wife and daughter in Singapore in late 1941 and went off to join his regiment. Prunella, pregnant with her second child, and Elizabeth boarded a steamship from Singapore before the outbreak of war and made the long voyage back to England via Australia, the Panama Canal, and the troubled waters of the Atlantic Ocean.
The now 25-year-old Vanya Ringer — born and brought up in Japan, regaled by Japanese servants, employees and friends, and poised to assume control of one of Japan’s best established foreign enterprises — took up arms and prepared to assist in unleashing a barrage of gunfire at Japanese soldiers storming southward toward Singapore. After the outbreak of war on December 8, 1941, the British forces struggled to maintain positions and defend towns against the invading Japanese armies. They engaged Japanese divisions at the Battle of River Slim in January 1942 and suffered terrible casualties, finally retreating into the jungle to regroup. Vanya Ringer died of fever two weeks later.
Prunella Ringer did not receive official notification of her husband’s death until after the war’s end.
(The above is an abridged excerpt from the author’s book Holme, Ringer & Co.: The Rise and Fall of a British Enterprise in Japan, Brill {Global Oriental Imprint}, 2013.)
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| The former Ringer House in Nagasaki |
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| Sutherland Lodge, currently up for sale. |
Today, the former Ringer house at No. 2 Minamiyamate — a quasi-Western-style building of stone construction erected around 1868 — is preserved on-site in Nagasaki’s Glover Garden as a nationally designated Important Cultural Property. Sutherland Lodge, uninhabited for several years, is currently on the real estate market. Photographs of the property can be seen at: https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/61209950#/
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