Lady Invernairn, Elspeth, 1871-1955.

The collection consists of letters from Sir Ernest H. Shackleton to Lady Invernairn, between 1906 and 1914, and other items relating to the DISCOVERY and NIMROD expeditions.

Administrative / biographical background
Eliza (or Elspeth) Small Tullis was born in Glasgow in 1871, the eldest daughter of David Tullis, a leather merchant, and his wife Christina Tullis née Stiven. She married William Beardmore, chairman and managing director of William Beardmore & Co., engineers and shipbuilders, in 1902. They both met Ernest H. Shackleton in Edinburgh in 1905, not long after his return from the Antarctic where he had been a junior officer with the British National Antarctic Expedition, 1901 to 1904. In 1906 Shackleton entered Beardmore's employment at Parkhead, Glasgow. With the financial support and encouragement of the Beardmores, Shackleton planned his own British Antarctic Expedition in the NIMROD, 1907 to 1909. Shackleton went south again in the ENDURANCE as leader of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, 1914 to 1917. Beardmore was created a baronet in 1914 and was raised to the peerage as Baron Invernairn of Strathnairn in 1921. Lady Invernairn became a widow in 1936 and married Colonel Ulric O. Thynne at Inverness in 1951. Mrs Elspeth Thynne of Flichity House, Strathnairn, died in 1955. See H.R. Mill, 'The Life of Sir Ernest Shackleton' by H.R. Hill, London, 1923, and ‘Shackleton’ by Margery and James Fisher, London, 1957.