Born at Lee, Kent 12 August 1866, he was educated at University College School and Hospital, and spent two years on the resident staff at Moorfields, the Royal London Ophthalmic Hospital. He sailed for South Africa in 1894 as ship's surgeon in SS *Dunbar Castle*. He practised for three years at Jacobstaal, Orange Free State, and then for seventeen years at Burghersdorp, Cape. He was President of the section of medicine at the annual meeting in 1912 of the South African Medical Congress. He came home in 1914 and settled in Sheffield as an ophthalmic surgeon, where he served the Wharncliff Hospital for thirty years. He was a medical referee for eye cases to various public bodies including the County Court. He was Chairman of the Sheffield division of the British Medical Association in 1921, and Vice-President of the section of ophthalmology at the Association's annual meeting in Sheffield in 1928. He retired in 1944 to Banstead, Surrey, where he died on 18 September 1957 aged 91, the second senior Fellow. Caiger was an active churchman and a lay preacher. He described himself as a "moral idealist".