Joseph James Kinsey was born in Kent, England in 1852. He taught in England before emigrating in 1880 to Christchurch, New Zealand, where he founded the shipping firm of Kinsey and Company. Between 1, he then became commissioner for Canterbury at the South Seas Exhibition in Dunedin between 1889 and 1890, after which he was Belgian Consul in 1898.
Deeply interested in Antarctic exploration, he acted as New Zealand agent for a number of expeditions to the Antarctic between 1903 and 1914, including the British Antarctic Expedition, 1910-1913 (leader Robert Falcon Scott) and the British Antarctic Expedition, 1907-1909 (leader Ernest Henry Shackleton). Kinsey was knighted in 1917. He died in 1936.
From the guide to the Sir Joseph Kinsey collection, 1902-1913, (Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge)
