Stewart Henbest Capper

[citation needed] In later life he is remembered as Professor Capper due to his academic role at McGill University in Canada.

Born in Douglas, Isle of Man, the son of Jasper John Capper (1820–1918), he was raised in Upper Clapton in London until his family moved to Edinburgh when Stewart was nine years old, either just before or just after the death of his mother, Harriet Millington Jackson (1820–1870).

Capper then decided to pursue a life in architecture and received a post in the office of John Burnet & Son in Glasgow in 1884.

After a relatively brief period in this role he moved to Paris to attend the Ecole des Beaux-Arts as a pupil of Jean-Louis Pascal.

[3] He stayed here for 4 years of study, during which time he befriended Alexander Nisbet Paterson, Frank Worthington Simon and John Keppie.

The partnership with Simon was brief and dissolved in 1892, and Capper thereafter involved himself closely in the project ideas of Patrick Geddes who sought to make good use of abandoned and derelict properties in Edinburgh's Old Town to house students for the "Town and Gown University Settlement", which although now viewed largely as a philanthropic and conservationist gesture this was primarily as a money-making exercise.

In Manchester he chose a similar role and rose to brevet major in the Officer Training Corps of the University.

His time from 1912 to the outbreak of World War I is unclear but at that point he joined the Manchester Volunteers[5] and was dispatched to Gallipoli.

However, no Scottish friends or family attended, because they were unable to reach Cairo in the customary 24 hours permitted in Arabic countries between death and funeral.