Jubilee Clip
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A registered trademark in many countries around the globe, the Jubilee® Clip was invented by ex Royal Naval Commander, Lumley Robinson, in 1921. The product itself is a worm drive hose clip or hose clamp or hose clip and is a device used to attach and seal a hose onto a fitting such as a barb. Today there are many other hose clips of a similar design.
[edit] The Inventor
Lumley Robinson was born in Leeds, Yorkshire in the late 1870s to a family of strict Methodists. In his first job he worked for John Fowler’s, a highly respected engineering firm in Leeds before later joining the Royal Navy. He married Emily Boyd Sykes at the Mint Chapel, Holbeck, Leeds on 23rd October 1906 and they moved to Gillingham when Lumley was based at Chatham Dockyard. During his time in the navy Lumley was on the Aboukir when it was sunk in the North Sea along with two other ships during the First World War and he spent several hours in the sea before he was rescued.
Together Lumley and Emily had 4 children. Henry, who went to Cambridge University and became Director of Education for Rochdale. Leonard, who joined the Navy and then later worked for an advertising company called Ripley Preston in Bristol, where the first well known adverts for Jubilee® Clips were made. Dorothy, who married and stayed in Gillingham. And John, who would eventually run the family business.
During his time in the navy it had often seemed obvious to Lumley that a new way needed to be found to attach a hose to a pipe. On leaving the navy he spent a lot of time with a friend who had a lathe in his garage, making things and in particular looking for a simple and effective solution to the problem. Once he had the first clips made he went to London every day attempting to sell them. His wife Emily had such faith in her husband that she suggested re-mortgaging their house to pay for the first lot of steel, but this was never necessary because the company took off.
Commander Lumley Robinson died of a heart attack on holiday in Jersey on 20th August 1939.
[edit] The Company
Following the death of Commander Lumley Robinson, war broke out and men came from the war ministry in September 1939, realising that Jubilee® Clips would be needed for the war effort they intended to take over the company. However, Emily Lumley-Robinson (who added her late husband's name to her own following his death), insisted that there would be no question of this and ran the company herself, which she continued to do after the war until her youngest son John Lumley-Robinson (who being under 21 when his mother changed her name had been the only other member of the family to take the surname Lumley-Robinson) took over. During and after the war other hose clip manufacturers started to emerge all over Europe, but Jubilee® continued to be successful. The group grew with Jubilee® Components Ltd and Jubilee® Clips Ltd being formed to take on the manufacturing processes, alongside L. Robinson & Co (Plating) Ltd, an electro-plating company established in 1968.
In 1982 the group established a first overseas company when John Jennings (John Lumley-Robinson's son-in-law), founded Jubilee® Clips Deutschland GmBH, in anticipation of Britain leaving the EU under growing political pressure at that time. This company continues to be a success selling Jubilee® products in Germany and mainland Europe.
More recently in 2007/08 the group acquired a new site in Gillingham, Kent, where all of the UK based manufacturing and distribution activities of the UK companies of the group are now consolidated on one site in the town where the very first Jubilee® Clips were made by the original inventor, Lumley Robinson.
