Francis Edward Bowles Fripp, civil engineer, was the son of Dr Henry Edward Fripp (MD) and his wife Catherine Marianne, born de Soyres. On 2 September 1907 he married Constance Elizabeth Ballard in Cape Town. Soon thereafter he went to the Transvaal and Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) for some years and then appears to have returned to England.
Fripp published two articles based on his stay in southern Africa. "Rainfall of Southern Rhodesia" (Geography Teacher, 1909/10, Vol. 5, pp. 77-81) presented meteorological data collected at Ringstead Reef, some 50 km from Bulawayo, which the author used to describe the climate of the area. The second was "An engineer's notes on old mine-workings of Transvaal and Rhodesia" (Proceedings of the Rhodesia Scientific Association, 1912, Vol. 11, pp. 168-181).
By 1920 Fripp resided in Brockenhurst, Hampshire, England. In that year he was granted a United States patent for an improved apparatus for cutting tapered elliptical holes.
