EFA Centenary ArtEFActs: Mallory's Invoice

13/06/24: George Herbert Leigh-Mallory (1886-1924) was an English mountaineer who participated in the first three British expeditions to climb Mount Everest in the early 1920s.

When asked by a reporter why he wanted to climb Everest, he purportedly replied, “Because it’s there.”

He was educated at Winchester and Magdelene College, Cambridge, and from 1910 onwards was a teacher at Charterhouse School.

During the 1924 expedition, Mallory and his climbing partner, Andrew “Sandy” Irvine (an Old Salopian), disappeared on the Northeast Ridge of Everest. The pair were last seen alive approximately 800 feet from the summit, sparking debate as to whether one or both of them reached it before they died. Doing so would make them the first to conquer Everest, 29 years earlier than Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay’s ascent in 1953.

Mallory’s body was found in 1999. Amongst the personal effects recovered from it was a handkerchief containing a letter from his brother, Trafford, and this misspelled invoice for “Five Gloves” and balls from Gamage’s, a now-defunct department store in Holborn, London.

The original items are now looked after by the Royal Geographical Society at its base in Kensington. The organisation has been commemorating the 100th anniversary of the 1924 expedition and the invoice is reproduced here by kind permission of the Royal Geographical Society with IBG.