Abstract
Frederic Stanley Kipping was born on 16 August 1863 at Higher Broughton in Manchester. He was the eldest son of James Stanley and Julia Kipping and had two brothers and four sisters. His father held a post in the Manchester branch of the Bank of England of which his paternal grandfather was head. His grandfather on his mother’s side was C. A. Duval, a Manchester artist of considerable reputation. James Stanley Kipping played chess against many of the champions of his time, including Paul Murphy, whom he defeated on one occasion when this World Champion was playing a number of opponents simultaneously. F. S. Kipping regarded himself as only a moderate player, but his eldest son, C. S. Kipping, Headmaster of Wednesbury High School, inherited his grandfather’s skill and is a composer of chess problems of worldwide repute and has edited various chess journals. Kipping early acquired that interest in open-air life which was never to leave him. His father owned a small farm near Higher Broughton, which was at that time practically in the open country. Here he made himself generally useful and gained a fair knowledge of animals and practical agriculture. In the early days the Kipping children had a governess, but at the age of eleven Frederic Stanley entered Manchester Grammar School on the same day as Herbert Brereton Baker. (It is remarkable that both these boys became Longstaff Medallists of the Chemical Society.) He had already become interested in chemistry through his father’s friend and neighbour, J. Carter Bell, the public analyst for Cheshire, who showed him various simple precipitation reactions in inorganic chemistry, and advised his father to make him an analytical chemist. No doubt at this time that honourable profession was still generally regarded from the Dickensian point of view, so clearly indicated in
Our mutual friend
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