Frederick Ringer

During the decades from the late 19th to early 20th century, Ringer made great contributions to trade and industrial promotion in Nagasaki.

The Ringer Hut chain of fast-food restaurants, specialising in Nagasaki dishes Champon and Sara udon, is named after him.

The middle brother of the three, Sydney Ringer[3] MD, FRS (1836–1910) became an eminent physician, physiologist and pharmacologist at University College, London.

In 1865, Frederick was recruited by Glover & Co. to supervise the company's tea trade in Nagasaki, the great sea port on the western coast of Kyushu, Japan.

Holme Ringer & Co. served as Lloyd's representative in Nagasaki and agents for a long list of international banking, insurance and shipping companies.

They both exported coal in large quantities, but their principal agent in Kyushu was none other than Wuriu Shokwai, the Holme Ringer & Co. branch in Shimonoseki.

Over the years, he established a mechanized flour mill, a steam laundry, petroleum storage facilities, and stevedoring, trawling and whaling concerns.

In August of the same year, Sydney's two sons, Michael and Vanya, were arrested as spies by Japanese authorities and forced to leave the country.

Sydney was required to close the Nagasaki office of Holme Ringer & Co. in October 1940 and to flee to Shanghai, where he and his wife were later arrested and interned in a Japanese war camp.