	He was a Dunedin landowner and contractor, and was one of the promoters of the Dunedin Peninsula and Ocean Beach Railway. He owned the horse-drawn trams serving the suburbs of Dunedin and having a "virtual monopoly", until he sold them to the Dunedin City and Suburban Tramway Co in 1883 for £55,000. He was the brother-in-law of newspaper proprietor Sir George Fenwick, owing to Fenwick's marriage to Proudfoot's sister Jane.