[1] In 1842, following the failure of his father's drapery business, he moved to Edinburgh and joined the publishing office of the newspaper The Scotsman, co-founded and later solely owned by his great-uncle John Ritchie, with whom he initially lived.

[1] The large increase in the influence and circulation of the paper was in a great measure due to his activity and direction, and it brought him a fortune, which he spent during his lifetime in public benefaction.

He presented to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, opened in Edinburgh in 1889, and costing over 70,000 pounds sterling.

[4][5] Findlay also undertook a number of practical philanthropic projects under his own direct supervision, the most significant of which were concerned with the provision of 'ideal' workers' housing.

In 1889 he built the "Well Court" development in Edinburgh's Dean Village (again designed by Mitchell), followed by the further developments of Hawthorn Buildings and Dean Path Buildings in the same area in 1895 (designed by James Bow Dunn and Findlay's son James Leslie Findlay).