Downing College : George Wherry’s Alpine Club photographs: members, climbers, guides and mountains

Wherry, George Edward, 1852-1928 (surgeon and Alpine climber)

Downing College

<p style='text-align: justify;'><p>George Edward Wherry’s Alpine Club photographs, 1890s: A small collection of photographs of Wherry with other members, climbers and guides in formal groups and while climbing, including selected named peaks in Europe (with annotations on reverse). Wherry’s ‘climbing friend’ Francis Aston-Binns was a frequent companion on many of his climbs during this period, with guides Xaver Imseng and Alois Kalbermatten, before Aston-Binns’ death in a climbing accident with Imseng in September 1898. Some of these photographs were reproduced by Wherry in his ‘Alpine Notes and the Climbing Foot’ (1896).</p><p>George Wherry was born in 1852 in Bourne, Lincolnshire, and was educated medically at St Thomas's Hospital, taking membership of the College of Surgeons in 1873. In 1874 he was elected house-surgeon at Addenbrooke's Hospital and matriculated at Cambridge as a non-collegiate student, migrating to Downing College the following year and graduating BA and MB in 1878 (MChir 1879). He was a surgeon at Addenbrooke's Hospital from 1874 until 1915, after which he was elected Honorary consulting surgeon. He was University Lecturer in surgery from 1883, when the post was established, to 1911 and University Teacher (at Addenbrooke's) from 1914-17. After the death of Downing’s Master, Professor Howard Marsh, in 1915, Wherry acted as supervisor of the surgical examinations in the University and was elected an Honorary Fellow at Downing College in 1927. Throughout the First World War, Wherry was Lieutenant-Colonel and surgeon at the First Eastern General Hospital based in Cambridge. He was a keen Alpine climber and an active member of the Alpine Club and British Association of the Swiss Alpine Club, publishing two books about his expeditions and experiences as a climber: 'Alpine Notes and the Climbing Foot' (1896) and 'Notes from a Knapsack' (1909). The latter also touched on various other medical and scientific interests. Wherry died in 1928 in Zermatt, Switzerland, where he is buried in the English Cemetery. Wherry’s obituary in ‘The Alpine Journal’, 1929 Vol. 41, gives details of some of his climbing seasons.</p><p>The collection has been digitised and copyright in the digital images is retained by Downing College. Private, non-commercial research use is permitted but permission is required for publication or sharing online.</p><p>The full catalogue of Wherry’s papers and photographs is <a target='_blank' class='externalLink' href='https://archivesearch.lib.cam.ac.uk/repositories/12/archival_objects/674158'>available via ArchiveSearch</a>.</p></p>