A well-to-do Huntingdon attorney, descended from John Ferrar (1588–1657), merchant and politician. He married Love Beverley; their eldest daughter Martha married Peter Peckard. He was the custodian of the family papers, which he left to his son-in-law (now the Ferrar Papers in the Old Library, Magdalene College).
George Finch was a member of the 1922 British Mount Everest Expedition. He was a proponent of the use of oxygen at high-altitude, a controversial topic at the time.
George Finch was born on 4 August 1888, near Orange, New South Wales, the eldest son of Charles Edward Finch, farmer and land court judge, and his wife, Laura. From an early age he was a keen explorer of the local countryside; it was a view of Orange, from a nearby hill, that inspired his desire to see the world from the tops of mountains. In 1902 the family moved to England as his father thought that a British education would benefit his sons. However, the discipline of public schools was incompatible with his desire to instil in them independence and self-reliance. It was agreed that Laura Finch would oversee the boys' private tuition in Europe, while their father returned to Australia to manage the family property.
In 1905 Finch entered the École de Médecine, Paris, but soon decided the subject was not to his liking. From 1907 he studied physical sciences at Zürich Polytechnic, graduating DTechChem in 1911. While in Switzerland he spent much time climbing in the Alps with his younger brother Maxwell, who was also studying in Zürich. George Finch was regarded locally as a very talented climber.
Finch moved to England in 1912; he worked briefly at the Royal Arsenal but the following year was appointed demonstrator in the newly formed fuel department at Imperial College.
During the First World War he served in France and in Salonika, where he developed an aerial mine to combat enemy spotter aircraft. He was mentioned in dispatches and appointed MBE. While on leave, on 16 June 1915 he married Alicia Gladys but the marriage was short and unhappy, ending in divorce about 1919.
After the war Finch returned to Imperial College. On 28 December 1921 he married Agnes Isobel Johnston. In the same year Finch was appointed a lecturer in electrochemistry. He became professor of applied physical chemistry in 1936. In 1952 he was appointed director of the National Chemical Laboratory in Poona, India. He retired in 1957, returning to England.
Throughout the 1920s Finch was an active mountaineer. Though his Australian unorthodoxy did not go down well with the climbing establishment he was selected for the 1922 British attempt on Everest. He was one of the earliest advocates of the use of oxygen. With George Mallory he reached 27,235 ft, at that time a record altitude, and the following year he was the first to climb the north face of the Dent d'Herens in the Swiss Alps. Yet, despite his achievements, he was excluded from the 1924 Everest team.
In 1929 he founded the Imperial College Mountaineering Club, but following a gastric illness and the death of three club members on the Jungfrau in 1931, he gave up climbing himself. Many years later, in 1959, he was elected president of the Alpine Club.
During his subsequent career Finch received many honours. He was elected FRS in 1938, and awarded the society's Hughes medal in 1944. He was president of the Physical Society in 1947–9 and Guthrie lecturer in 1950. He was appointed commander of the Belgian order of Leopold II in 1938, and made a chevalier of the French Légion d'honneur in 1952. A keen sailor from the time he had given up mountaineering, he moved in his last years to The Grange, East Hanney, Berkshire, where he died on 22 November 1970, survived by his wife.
Dr Howard Somervell was a member of the 1922 and 1924 British Mount Everest Expeditions.
Howard Somervell was born on 16 April 1890, the eldest of three children and elder son of William Henry Somervell, of Brantfield, Kendal, and his wife, Florence Howard. His father worked for Somervell Brothers of Kendal, later more widely known as K Shoes. He was educated at Rugby School (1904–9) but was unhappy there. When he was eighteen he became a member of the Keswick-based Fell and Rock Climbing Club and thus started a lifetime's devotion to the mountains of the English Lake District.
Somervell went to Caius College, Cambridge, where he obtained first classes in both parts of the Natural Sciences Tripos (1911 and 1913). He then served with the British Expeditionary Force in France (1915–18) as a captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps, and was mentioned in dispatches. After the war he graduated from London's University College Hospital (MB, BCh, 1921) and became FRCS in 1920.
Somervell's Everest ambitions were stimulated in 1921 during mountaineering trips in Britain and Europe. He realised that the Himalayan region called for constant movement above 20,000 ft. Everest was to be his physical test in 1922 and 1924, but his colleagues commented too on his mental endurance.
Somervell wrote of Mallory that his outlook on life was "lofty and choice, human and loving and in a measure divine".
In 1924 Somervell was in danger of choking to death, E. F. Norton wrote: 'Somervell very nearly choked, and was handicapped for three days. Only saved by coughing up the obstructing matter with a lot of blood. That he achieved what he did in this condition was a remarkable performance'.
After the 1922 Everest expedition he set out to see India. He saw that it was ill-equipped medically and poorly provided for in the skills which he possessed. When he visited the main hospital of the south Travancore medical mission and its group of outstations centred on Neyyoor, he found only one qualified surgeon, Stephen Pugh, struggling with a queue of waiting patients which would take ten days to reduce. Somervell offered to perform those overdue operations. He returned to London and told his friends in London hospitals that he had decided to devote his life to India after another attempt on Everest. He joined the 1924 expedition on which Mallory and Irvine died.
From 1924 to 1949 Somervell worked for the south Travancore medical mission which, with its branch hospitals, could claim to be the largest of its kind in the world. He attracted young surgeons to work with him, especially in the surgery of the stomach. Somervell also pioneered the modern treatment of leprosy believing that it could be cured. His home for leprosy patients had four big dormitories for eighty patients, and there was also a leprosy settlement for permanent residents. By 1936 several scores of patients had been sent home cured and free from all symptoms of the disease.
In 1938 he was awarded the Kaisar-i-Hind gold medal, and was appointed OBE in 1953.
He accepted the post of associate professor of surgery at the Vellore Christian Medical College (1949–61), then at a crucial stage of its development as a teaching hospital. It was a fitting climax to his forty years' service in India.
He died on 23 January 1975. Sir Francis Younghusband described him as 'a man of science, a man of art, a man of warm humanity and of strong religious feeling'.
Dr Arthur Wakefield, a general practitioner from Cumbria, was a member of the 1922 British Mount Everest Expedition.
Edward Strutt was born in 1874, he was educated at Christ Church, Oxford, and Innsbruck University. He spent his holidays climbing, and he joined the Alpine Club at the age of 21. He was also a member of Sektion Bernina of the Swiss Alpine Club.
During the Boer War Strutt served with the Royal Scots, 1900-02 (dispatches, Queen’s Medal and four clasps, King’s Medal and two clasps).
He married Florence Nina Hollond in 1905.
In the period 1916-17 he was Field-Marshal Milne’s principal liaison officer with French headquarters at Salonika, and for his services in the war received many decorations and honours (D.S.O., 1917; C.B.E., 1919). In March 1919, as an officer of the Allied Council in Vienna, he escorted the Austrian Imperial Family to safety in Switzerland. In 1920 he became High Commissioner at Danzig.
On the Mount Everest expedition of 1922 he was second in command to General Bruce.
He was editor of the Alpine Journal from 1927 to 1937 and president of the Alpine Club from 1935 to 1938. His last visit to Switzerland was in May 1946, when he addressed a gathering of mountaineers at Zürich.
Beridge Ruth Mallory was known as Berry. She was George and Ruth's second child and youngest daughter. Her older sister was Clare and her brother was John. Berry married David Robertson, who later published a biography of his father-in-law, George Mallory.
Frances Clare Mallory was known as Clare. She was George and Ruth's first child and eldest daughter. Her younger sister was Beridge (Berry) and her brother was John.
She married Glenn Millikan who died in a climbing accident in Tennessee in 1947. They had three sons, George, Richard, and Mark.
Brigadier General Charles G. Bruce was the leader of the 1922 and 1924 British Mount Everest Expeditions.
Charles Bruce was born in London on 7 April 1866, the youngest son of Henry Austin Bruce, first Baron Aberdare (1815–1895), politician, and his second wife, Nora Creina Blanche, youngest daughter of Lieutenant-General Sir William Napier. He had three brothers and eight sisters. They lived at Dyffryn, an estate in Glamorgan, and at Queen's Gate, London.
He was educated at Harrow School (1879–80) and Repton School (1881–4), and spent two years in the militia in York, where he was a noted wrestler and runner. He was commissioned in the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire light infantry in 1887; and he served briefly with an Indian regiment in Madras and Burma before moving in 1889 to the 5th Gurkha Rifles, the regiment with which he served for most of his career. During the Tirah campaign Bruce cut the Gurkhas' tight-fitting breeches off above the knee, an improvisation that was once said to have introduced shorts into the Indian and British armies. In 1891 Bruce studied the equipment of Italian mountain troops in Turin, and he ran a training course for frontier scouts from 1891 to 1913. He taught staff college instructors in his training methods on the slopes of Snowdonia in 1910.
Bruce travelled widely in the Himalayas and organised porters for several important mountaineering expeditions. In 1907 and 1910 Bruce developed serious proposals for the ascent of Mount Everest that were abandoned for political reasons.
On 12 September 1894 he married Finetta Madeline Julia, daughter of Colonel Sir Edward Fitzgerald Campbell, second baronet; and their only child, a son, died in infancy in the Himalayas.
After being adjutant and second-in-command of the 5th Gurkha Rifles he was promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel in May 1913, and in May 1914 he was appointed to command the 6th Gurkha Rifles. He went with them to Egypt for the defence of the Suez Canal at the outbreak of war in 1914. In Gallipoli he commanded the depleted battalions of the 29th Indian Brigade, including the 5th and 6th Gurkhas at Gurkha bluff, for which he was mentioned in dispatches three times and was promoted to Brevet Colonel in November 1915. Severely wounded in the leg, he was evacuated before the withdrawal, and on discharge from hospital was appointed general officer commanding the independent frontier brigade at Bannu, a position he held from 1916 to 1919. He commanded the North Waziristan field force in 1917, and served in the Third Anglo-Afghan War (May 1919). In these operations he was mentioned twice in dispatches. His health deteriorated in the heat, and he was invalided out of the service with the honorary rank of Brigadier-General in 1920.
When Tibet unexpectedly granted permission for a Mount Everest expedition, Bruce could not obtain leave to join the first reconnaissance in 1921, but he was appointed leader of the next expedition in 1922. He was too old to take part in the climbing, but his knowledge of Himalayan languages and military organisation, his cheerfulness and joviality, and the Gurkhas he brought to organise the porters all contributed to the expedition's success. Captain John Geoffrey Bruce (his cousin) and George Finch reached a record elevation of 27,300 ft using oxygen.
In 1924 Bruce was again appointed Everest leader, but contracted malaria on a tiger hunt immediately before the expedition. On the march to Everest he became seriously ill and turned the leadership over to Colonel E. F. Norton. Bruce became the model for later Everest leaders.
After his wife's death in 1932 he wrote his autobiography, Himalayan Wanderer (1934), and moved to 27 St Mary Abbot's Terrace, London, where he died on 12 July 1939.
Bentley Beetham was an English mountaineer, ornithologist and photographer, and a member of the 1924 British Mount Everest expedition.
Bentley Beetham was born in Darlington in 1886, the second son of James Weighell Beetham and his wife Frances. His father was a bank manager and died when Beetham was four years old. Until the age of eight Beetham was educated at Mr Bowman's Preparatory School; he then attended the Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School, Darlington. From 1899 to 1903 he attended the North Eastern County School where he was a boarder. He left school at the age of sixteen.
Initially he worked in an architect's office in Darlington and then between 1903-1914 he was busy with field research, writing books and articles, photography and giving lectures. In
1914, having established himself as a leading ornithologist, he returned to the North Eastern County School to teach natural history.
Beetham started rock climbing in the Lake District where he used Wasdale Head as a base and became fiends with Howard Somervell. Together they made ascents of the classic Lakeland climbs in the period before the First World War. After the war, Beetham and Somervell started climbing in the Alps. In 1924 they were both chosen to join the 1924 Everest Expedition.
In 1927 he was elected a member of the Royal Geographical Society.
In 1949 he retired and in 1962 he was disabled by a stroke. He spent his last year in a nursing home, where he died on 5 April 1963.
Hugh Thackeray Turner was born in Foxearth, Essex, the son of Rev. John Richard Turner (a Church of England vicar) and his wife Harriet.
After leaving Newbery Grammar School he was apprenticed to the architect Sir George Gilbert Scott. In 1877 Turner began work on his own account. He was also employed by Scott's sons, John Oldrid and George Gilbert junior, becoming the latter's chief assistant.
Turner left Scott's office to become Secretary for The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (founded by William Morris in 1877). His job was to investigate, inspect and report on buildings at risk from insensitive restoration. He held the post until 1911.
On 19 July 1888 he married Mary Elizabeth (May) Powell (1854–1907). May became a leading member of the arts and crafts movement in her own right, exhibiting needlework and founding the Women's Guild of Arts with May Morris. The couple had three daughters, the second of whom, Ruth, married George Mallory in July 1914.
In 1898 Turner designed his own home Westbrook in Godalming, which with the assistance of Gertrude Jekyll's assistance was surrounded by a much admired garden.
After a long retirement he died of pyelonephritis on 11 December 1937 in London.
Edward Wymper was a mountaineer who wrote Scrambles Amongst the Alps in the years 1860-1869 which was one of the most popular mountaineering books ever written.
Albert Simon Aimé Bussy was a French painter who married the English novelist Dorothy Strachey Bussy. He knew and painted many members of the Bloomsbury circle and was friends with George Mallory.
Bussy was born in Dole and came from a family of shoemakers. He went from the drawing school in Dole to Gustave Moreau's studio in the École des beaux-arts de Paris, where he met and became friends with Henri Matisse. He received an honorable mention in 1894 at the Salon des artistes français for his Le Joueur de clarinette and Saint Georges terrassant le dragon. He showed a Portrait of Albert Machado in 1896. In 1897 he had his first solo exhibition at the Durand-Ruel gallery in Paris.
In 1901 Bussy visited London, where he came into contact with members of some English artistic circles, especially the Bloomsbury Group, and where he met Dorothy Strachey, who he married in 1903. Shortly after the wedding Simon and Dorothy moved to Roquebrune Cap Martin, in the south of France, where they bought a small house that soon became a meeting point for both French and English artists, writers and intellectuals. In addition to Dorothy's brother, the historian Lytton Strachey, and his cousin, the painter Duncan Grant, others included Rudyard Kipling, André Gide, Roger Fry, Vanessa Bell, Mark Gertler, Paul Valéry, Virginia Woolf, and Bernard Berenson. The painters Henri Matisse and Georges Rouault also visited.
Bussy was successful in the 1920s and 1930s, but his appreciation by both the public and critics declined after this time. He died in London in 1954, at the age of 88.
Gyalzen Kazi was a climbing sherpa, interpreter, and sardar on the 1921, 1922, and 1924 Mount Everest Expeditions. George Mallory mentioned him by name.
Basil Williams was born in London on 4 April 1867, the only son of Frederick George Adolphus Williams, barrister, and his wife, Mary Katharine Lemon. He was educated at Marlborough College and New College, Oxford. He volunteered for service in the South African wars and then spent time working in the education department. After returning to England he dedicated himself to a career as an historian.
In 1905 he married Dorothy Caulfeild. They had two sons, one of whom (John) taught George Mallory to ski.
He died at 46 Amhurst Park, Stoke Newington, London, on 5 January 1950.
Mentioned by George Mallory in letter to his wife Ruth Mallory
Mildred married Major Robert Morgan.
Renowned for his amorous escapades and as the founder in 1819 of the ‘four-in-hand club’ and leader of the Badminton and Windsor hunts.
Founder of the Royal Academy of Music, London in 1823.
John Bull was a fictitious embodiment of Englishness and British imperialism.
Philanthropist and wife of Lord Byron.
Maurice Platnauer was Principal of Brasenose College, Oxford, from 1956 to 1960. He was educated at Shrewsbury School and New College, Oxford. A classicist, he was a master at Winchester College from 1910 to 1915. During World War One he was an officer with the Royal Garrison Artillery and met up with George Mallory. In 1922 he became a Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford. He was Vice-Principal of Brasenose from 1936 to 1956; and Editor of the Classical Quarterly from 1936 to 1947; and an Honorary Fellow of New College from 1957.
Promoter of book collecting among the aristocracy, and promoter of first-hand examination of books in the compilation of bibliographies.
Stipple engraver. Son of the engraver, James Hopwood (1752?–1819).