Elly Kadoorie


Sir Eleazer "Elly" Silas Kadoorie was an Indian-born Jewish businessman and philanthropist active in Shanghai and Hong Kong. He was a member of the wealthy Kadoorie family that had large business interests in the Far East.

Biography

His family were originally Iraqi Jews from Baghdad who later migrated to Bombay, India, in the mid-eighteenth century. His brother was Sir Ellis Kadoorie, and his sons are Sir Lawrence Kadoorie and Sir Horace Kadoorie.
Elly Kadoorie arrived in Shanghai from Bombay in 1880 as an employee of the Sephardic Jewish firm David Sassoon & Sons. Within a few years he had accumulated large sums of money and had gone into business on his own account, with companies in both Shanghai and Hong Kong. He became the largest shareholder when CLP was restructured in early 20th century. Over the next two decades, the Kadoorie brothers made their fortunes, achieving success in banking, rubber plantations, electric power utilities and real estate and gaining a major shareholding in Hong Kong Hotels Limited.
Kadoorie was made an Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1926 Birthday Honours. He became a naturalised British citizen the following year.
In 1942, Kadoorie was taken from his home in Shanghai and interned in a Japanese prison camp for foreign civilians. He died in prison in 1944.
Sir Elly Kadoorie's grave and that of his wife Laura, Lady Kadoorie, are located in the Song Qingling Memorial Park near Hongqiao Road, Shanghai, and are accessible to visitors. Theirs are amongst only four Jewish tombstones in Shanghai which remained intact and were not destroyed during the Cultural Revolution.