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 ... »
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.
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