Born at Burton-on-Trent, and after education at the Grammar School was apprenticed for five years to Septimus Allen. Entered St Bartholomew’s Hospital in October, 1825, dissected, with Richard Owen, a fellow-student, and attended the lectures of John Abernethy. He was appointed Librarian of the Medical School. After acting as assistant to Mr Jones for two years at Henley-in-Arden he returned to St Bartholomew’s to qualify as LSA in 1828, and MRCS, in 1829. He attended the Moorfields Eye Infirmary, the École de Médecine in Paris, and Dupuytren’s lectures at the Hôtel Dieu. He was appointed Surgeon to the Islington Dispensary in Jan, 1830, and began the practice which he carried on for the ensuing fifty years. During the epidemic of cholera in 1832 he acted as Surgeon to the Islington Cholera Hospital in River Lane. The general belief in infection through the air from dead bodies involved the belief in the danger of making post-mortem examination. Having first made his will, Bateman examined post mortem every patient who died under his charge. He married three years later, resigned the active post at the dispensary for the appointment of Consulting Surgeon, and then started what became well known afterwards, the practice of seeing patients gratuitously from 6 o’clock in the morning, or even earlier in summer time, until 9 o’clock, when the door of his room at the end of his garden was closed with severe punctuality. As many as fifty to a hundred patients attended of a morning, who preserved his prescriptions with a reverence that testified to their utility. For eight years he continued this course daily, and subsequently three times weekly until a few years before his death. He was a most ardent believer in the mystical doctrines of Swedenborg, and was one of the mainstays of the ‘New Church’, Devonshire Street, Islington, in which he used to preach on Sundays. This and his large private practice absorbed his time, so that he said he never dined out except on the occasion of the Hunterian Festival at the College. In middle life he had an attack of haemoptysis, but continued active work until the long and trying illness from which he died on Nov 21st, 1880, at 13 Canonbury Lane, N. He left a son in the medical profession, Alfred G Bateman, who was secretary of the Medical Defence Union. Publications: Bateman found time to publish accounts of cases in his practice including: “On Strangulated Hernia.” – *Lond. Med. Gaz.*, 1832, x, 154. “On Cancer.” – *Med. and Surg. Jour.*, 1832, i, 595. “Case of Lyssa (Hydrophobia).” – *Lancet*, 1844, i, 13. “Successful Operation for Hare-lip four Hours after Birth.” – *Med. Times*, 1850, xxii, 383. “The Treatment of Naevus.” – *Lancet*, 1869, ii, 660.