I know it's a hell of a place, specially to settled down there with the technology of the XIX, and early XX century, but was something else besides the climate? I'm thinking in Greenland at least having docks in the route of the North Atlantic between Norway and Canada.
as /u/alex061397 said, Antarctica is a pretty poor choice of places to set up a permanent colony. It's not really on the way to anything, and even when it is, there are more resource rich places to stop and resupply. However, there is (or at least was) something there that people wanted to exploit, even if only temporarily: whales.
From the mid 1800's to today there are whaling ports all over South Georgia, the Falkland Islands, and Antarctica. (although far fewer of them are in use now) wikipedia. These ports were basically places where British, American, Norwegian, and occasionally Japanese whalers would drag the whales ashore to harvest them for blubber, meat, and ambergris if they were lucky. They had plenty of types of whales to choose from, even if blue whales were too strong to be killed.
Mods: is it necessary to cite only online sources? It's really hard to find anything reliable on the internet that doesn't require a jstor account.
This is sort of an aside, but it's worth noting that the climate in Greenland is significantly milder than that of Antarctica. Greenland is mild enough that the Vikings even managed to grow some crops and has some 500 plant species, even trees and small woodlands in sheltered spots -here's some pictures if you don't believe me
http://www.airgorilla.com/travelogues/greenland/greenland-travel-trip-3.html
Meanwhile, Antarctica has only 2 species of vascular plants and no shrubs or trees...and those are confined to the most sheltered and hospitable parts of the Antarctic peninsula.
http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/about_antarctica/wildlife/plants/
So they aren't directly comparable
They have, in fact. Villa Las Estrellas is a civilian settlement on King George Island off the coast of Antarctica, and home to around 100 hardy Chileans. It even has its own Primary school. There is also a smaller Argentine civilian settlement in Esperanza Base on the Antarctic mainland.
It's out of the way, which means it's not good for trade, and the ocean around Antarctica tends to be unforgiving. Mostly though, by the time technology advanced to a state where it might be possible to live on Antarctica, international agreements made settlement and commerce there essentially illegal.
Without those laws they probably would be more people living on the continent, likely supporting exploitation of various natural resources. As it is now, the land is more or less reserved for scientific study.