Gertrude Benham was a mountaineer who travelled the world pursuing this activity. During her travels she collected plants, some of which were deposited in the herbarium of the British Museum.
Benham was born in Marylebone, London, to an ironmonger and his wife. The family visited the Alps in the summer, where Benham developed her passion for climbing. By her twenties she had climbed both Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn. Her passion for travel was curtailed, however, by the obligation of caring for her parents in their old age.
Following her parents' deaths in 1891 and 1903, Benham was free to embark on an independent life of travel. She began by sailing to Canada, where she climbed in the Rockies and collected some plants. She went on to Fiji and New Zealand in 1905, before spending a period in Australia. She then travelled in Japan, India and Egypt, and visited Corsica on her way back to England.
Benham set out on another world trip in 1908, passing east to west via Japan and California, before arriving in Valparaiso, Chile. From here she crossed the Andes and Pampas to Buenos Aires. Crossing the Atlantic to Africa, she went by land to Zambia and Tanzania, and on to Uganda and Kenya, where she climbed Kilimanjaro.
Following her travels in Africa, Benham was recorded as being in Kashmir in about 1910-1911. She is on the passenger list of a steamer travelling from Tahiti to Britain via San Francisco in 1912.
In 1913 Benham was again in Africa, this time exploring the Niger Delta. From here she set out to walk east to Mozambique, passing through Cameroon, Rwanda and Uganda. She returned to the Himalayas in 1914, trekking from Simla to Srinigar and Kahmir.
Throughout her travels Benham sketched and collected plants. She sold knitting and embroidery, and bought ethnological artefacts. During the First World War she remained in England, where she was elected to the Royal Geographical Society in 1916 and forged links with the Natural History Museum. She resigned from the RGS after only six months due to an argument over its refusal to publish a paper she had written on African volcanoes.
Following the war, Benham resumed her travels, returning to the Himalayas, where she made her way from west Nepal to Ladakh. Two months were spent in the Seychelles in 1921, after which she was once more in East Africa. She went on to travel in South Africa, going on to Australia and the South Pacific. She returned to England in 1923, but the following year was in India again. She passed into Sikkim and Tibet in 1925.
After a sojourn in England in 1926, Benham made another remarkable round-the-world journey, this time visiting north-east Africa, Syria and Southeast Asia before arriving in Hong Kong in February 1927. From here she crossed the Pacific to California, explored Guatemala, Belize, the West Indies and Trinidad, and finally disembarked at Plymouth in January 1928.
In 1931, frustrated at not being permitted to enter Tibet, Benham secretly followed a route into the region via the western border of Nepal. In 1933-1934 she circumnavigated the globe for the seventh time. By this time Benham had climbed more than 300 peaks of over 10,000 feet. She decided she would make her final journey in 1935, to Vanuatu. She evidently made another journey, however, for in 1937 she was in Sri Lanka, boarding a ship for South Africa. This would be her final journey, for she died on board off the coast of East Africa.
Four years before her death, Benham had presented her extensive collections, gathered during her travels, to Plymouth Museum and Art Gallery. She had once landed in the town and had visited the museum, where she was impressed by the arrangement of artefacts.
Benham published accounts of her journeys in The Times and the Daily Mail, and occasional papers in alpine journals, but no book-length accounts. Her achievements were little recognised in her lifetime and only a short obituary was published, in The Times.
Sources:
RJ. Howgego, 2009, "Benham, Gertrude Emily (1867-1938)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online edn:
www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/57169, accessed 16 October 2012
R.J. Howgego, 2009, A 'very quiet and harmless traveller': Gertrude Emily Benham 1867-1938: a Biography.
