Mr John McQuair was born in St George, Edinburgh, Scotland on 18 September 1891. He was the youngest child of Charles McQuair, a house painter, and the former Janet Auld, natives of Edinburgh and Leith, respectively who had married in 1884. He had four elder siblings, three sisters (Margaret, Helen and Janet) and a brother, Charles. 

McQuair’s first working voyage was as a steward’s boy in 1907 aboard Carmania, aboard which he made several trips. In April 1912 McQuair was a waiter aboard Carpathia when that ship rescued the survivors of the Titanic disaster. 

McQuair continued working at sea in the following years; a Freemason and member of the Hamer Lodge since April 1914, with the outbreak of war in Europe he joined up for active service with the 1st 10th King’s Liverpool Regiment and was posted to the battlefields. He was killed in action on 31 July 1917 and was buried in New Irish Farm Cemetery in Ypres, Belgium. Dying intestate, McQuair’s estate, worth £236, 3s, 7d, was administered to his father, then a resident of 2 Caledonian Place in Edinburgh.