Elly Kadoorie

Origins and early life

Sir Eleazer 'Elly' Silas Kadoorie (1867-1944) was born in Baghdad and came to Shanghai in 1880, aged thirteen, as an employee of David Sassoon & Sons, the Baghdadi Jewish trading house.

Work and career

Within a few years he was in business on his own account, in Shanghai and in Hong Kong at once, and he and his brother Ellis made their fortunes in banking, rubber plantations, electric power, docks and property. He became the largest shareholder of China Light & Power when it was restructured, and took a major holding in Hong Kong Hotels. Britain made him an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1926; the Chinese government gave him the Order of the Brilliant Jade.

In 1942 the Japanese took him from his Shanghai house and interned him in a camp for foreign civilians, where he died on 8 February 1944. His grave and that of his wife Laura, née Mocatta, stand in Shanghai near Hongqiao Road: they are among only four Jewish tombstones in the city that survived the Cultural Revolution intact. His brother was Ellis Kadoorie and his sons were Lawrence Kadoorie and Horace Kadoorie.