Sir James Key Caird, largest donor to the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition

“Sir James Key Caird (1837-1916) was a wealthy Dundee jute manufacturer and philanthropist, to whom Sir Ernest Shackleton wrote in 1914 asking for a donation of £50. Caird promised £10,000 and in the event gave £24,000—a huge amount of money in 1913/4, amounting to many millions of pounds in today’s terms—to Shackleton’s 1914-16 Imperial Transantarctic Expedition, thus making the privately-financed Endurance trip possible.”
— jamescairdsociety.com

Read a short biography of Caird, and see additional images (including scenes inside his factories) at jamescairdsociety.com.