Batesons in South-East Asia
Australia and New Zealand
There
is next to no background information on the Batesons in Australia and New
Zealand. Most of what is known is noted
in the BMD and PAF listings and in the following snippets of information.
William
Jennings Bateson, was born in 1845.
His middle name came from his maternal grandmother. He married Emily Tetley in Otley on 23 December 1865
and a daughter, Ruthetta, was born the following year. But the marriage did not go well:
leaving his wife and child behind, William took ship to Sydney NSW, sailing onboard the SS Samarang
on 15 February 1869 as an Unassisted Passenger. Emily his wife died on 13 December 1870.
On 10 April 1872, in Candelo, he married Annie Goldsmith.
The
couple are known to have raised at least 5 children, all sons. Joseph Harold (b
1873), Edgar Theodore (b 1875), Frank Edwyn (b 1877) and William Henry Vincent
(b 1879) had at least 17 children between them. Roy EV Bateson was born in 1882
but died in infancy.
In
Windhill, William Jennings Bateson had been employed, like many bright
teenagers of the day, as a Pupil Teacher.
It is not surprising, therefore, to find that in April 1891, he was appointed
Principal of Adamstown (Newcastle, NSW) Public School.
Of William’s many descendants, most appear to have remained in
New South Wales – 9 are recorded in the NSW Electoral Rolls.
One,
Eric Hugh Bateson, was killed at the Battle of Pozieres in France on 4 August
1916.
One
other Bateson went directly to Australia:
James Bateson, son of Samuel Cowling
Bateson and the nephew of William Jennings Bateson emigrated at some time in
the 1880s but died in 1890 in Camperdown, NSW.
Mary
Ellen Bateson, born in late 1860 to Charles Bateson,
married Dixon Rollinson in 1885 and had four children – John (b 1886), Maggie
(b 1888), Emma (b 1890 but died in infancy) and Sarah Ellen (b 1894). Maggie
married Thomas Atkinson, a Shoemaker, shortly before leaving for New Zealand in
September 1913 onboard the Corinthic.
The rest of the family emigrated onboard the Ruahine in October 1913 and
set up home at Napier, Hawkes Bay. Dixon, a Joiner by trade, established a shop
supplying building materials. Thomas
Atkinson, sadly, was killed in the great earthquake of 1931. Maggie died in Napier in 1972. Both John and Sarah emigrated to
Australia. John, a Plasterer, married
in 1927 and died in Brisbane in 1947, while Sarah married in 1922 and died in
Brisbane in 1975.
Malaya and Borneo
Ernest Bateson, the 3rd child of William Henry and
Elizabeth Bateson, was born on 26 January 1883 and christened at Baildon Parish
Church on 20 June 1883.
At 18 he was a Correspondence Clerk,
possibly working in central Bradford for Thomas Cook.
He became interested in botany and
attended classes at Bradford Technical College. His teacher was William West, a
specialist in cryptogams.
He is reported to have obtained a
teaching post in Thornbury and to have passed his University of London
matriculation exams, securing a scholarship in Botany worth £90 pa to the Royal
College of Science (Imperial College) in 1907. [1]
He is said to have obtained a first
class in the examination for the Associateship of the RCS in 1910.
An Associateship was usually offered to
graduates but could also be bestowed on undergraduates. It may be that Ernest
curtailed his studies in order to take up a post in the Colonial Service and
may have been awarded the Associateship in lieu of a degree.
Ernest met his future wife Elsie Prior
at Imperial College (she graduated with a BSc honours degree (2nd class) in
Botany in 1911).
Ernest did an additional 3 months
training, presumably in tropical botany, at Kew Gardens and Imperial College in
the summer of 1910 before taking up a post as Assistant Mycologist to the
Federated Malay States in early 1911. [2]
He would spend the next 40 to 50 years
of his life in South-East Asia.
Timeline
On 13 Jan 1911 he sailed 2nd class on
the SS India from London to Penang. [3]
In 1912 it was reported that he had
arrived in Siam, having been sent by the FMS Government to investigate the
paddy system. One of his duties in Malaysia was to instruct local officials,
land officers and district officers on irrigation and planting. [4]
In 1913 he wrote an article for the
Agricultural Bulletin on the quality of the plantation rubber tree. [5]
In 1914 he wrote articles on the
Artificial Stimulation of Branching in Rubber Trees and on The Tapping of the
Para Rubber Tree. [6] [7]
The Agricultural Bulletin of the same
year carried his account of ‘padi’ experiments on fungal plant pathogens in
Krian, a district of Java. [8]
Elsie Prior left London on 20 February
1913 on the SS Nile bound for Penang. [9]
On 13 March the vessel arrived in Colombo
where she was met by an engineer called Wayland, a friend of hers. During a
brief stopover, he took her to Louis Siedle’s gem shop where, she wrote, he
bought her a ruby, two sapphires and a moonstone. [10]
The ship docked in Penang on 24 March,
Easter Monday.
On Easter Tuesday, Elsie and Ernest were
married at St George’s Church.
The bridesmaids, best man and witnesses were probably expat friends of Ernest. It is not known who gave Elsie away.
The couple left the following day for a
fortnight’s honeymoon in the Taiping Hills just to the south of Penang.
The Batesons
set up two homes – one in a Government-built bungalow in Parit Buntar, a
district of Penang – the other in a house in a district to the west of Kuala
Lumpur.
While Elsie
managed the household and the social calendar, Ernest would work in the office
in Penang or go on extended tours round his patch. They would play golf and tennis
and travel by rickshaw, car or motorbike to visit their new expat acquaintances
on nearby estates.
Elsie wrote
happily: “it is such a healthy out-of-door life here” [10], overlooking the
fact that the family often succumbed to tropical illnesses, including malaria
and dysentery.
By February 1914 they were on leave,
returning to England onboard the SS Nankin. An article in the Straits Times
noted that Ernest visited the Botanic Gardens in Peradeniya, Ceylon on his way
home. [11]
It also reported that he had been
appointed Mycologist in Borneo.
The North Borneo State Rubber Limited
noted in its 1915 Report: "his appointment as mycologist to our estate
is most valuable...” [12]
The couple arrived back in London in
March 1914. [13]
In June 1914 Ernest embarked in London
on the SS Delta, arriving in Singapore en route for Borneo on 24 July. [14]
Elsie remained in Sittingbourne and gave
birth to her first child, Elsa Gwendoline (Wendy), on 17 August.
With her baby daughter she sailed back
to Singapore on 20 September 1915, onboard the SS Khyber. [15]
By 25 October 1915, the Batesons were
well-ensconced in Jesselton (Kota Kinabalu), which Elsie described as “idyllic
and peaceful in the extreme”. [10] Their house was a large one, built on
stilts. The approach road would later be called Bateson’s Drive. [16]
The family’s second child, Vera Elizabeth
(Bunty), was born in Jesselton on 13 October 1916. Elsie notes that she weighed
9lb 12oz.
Elsie’s letters home related a
continuous round of social visits, garden parties and shopping trips. [10]
“Mrs Bateson,” said a later
report, “is an adept at entertainments of this sort (her annual garden
party) and her party was a great success”. [17]
Elsie did manage to find time to assist
her husband in his work – she translated a paper from the original German, for
example.
She also collected plants for Professor ED Merrill's project to classify the local flora. [18]
Although Ernest was officially the
Government Mycologist and Agricultural Advisor, several publications around
this time referred to him as Director of Agriculture.
There were a few disturbances to the idyll described by Elsie:
plagues of locusts decimated the vegetation and crops; the family suffered frequent attacks of fever;
Ernest was stricken by appendicitis; the servants went on strike. [19]
The First World War was grinding on, but North Borneo was a
long way from the Western Front: “The war doesn’t touch us at all, except in increased prices,”
wrote Elsie.
To compensate the suffering expats, the
British Government added 5% to their salaries. [10]
Sadly, a few weeks after writing: “the
war news is very good, isn’t it?” news came of her brother Harry Leonard
Prior’s death in a flying accident in July 1918.
After the war, in 1919, Elsie and her children, one of whom
- Wendy - was ill, were allowed to return to England, onboard the ambulance ship, SS Egypt. [20]
When Ernest was able to join them,
probably in 1920, they went to live in Jersey for 6 months so that he could
avoid becoming a British resident liable for income tax. [16]
In her memoirs [16], Vera wrote that on arrival in England, she could not speak English,
only Malay, the implication being that her parents seldom interacted with their children,
whose language skills came from their native amahs (nannies).
On 10 June 1921 Ernest and Elsie
embarked in London on the SS Manela bound for Singapore. They were travelling
First Class to Borneo, without their children, who remained with their
grandparents in Kent. [21]
In June 1924 Elsie arrived back in
London on the SS Ethiopia. [22]
She was followed a year later by
Ernest, travelling on the SS Morea. [23]
Briefly, they rented a secluded house –
White Cottage - at Holmwood, near Dorking.
On 26 Sept 1925 the entire family
embarked in London on the SS Haruna Maru. They were travelling First Class but
only as far as Marseille, en route to a first floor apartment in Menton. [9][24]
This was to be the home of part of the
family for the next 5 years.
At the end of December 1925, Ernest had
to return to England for his mother's funeral in Bradford.
In June 1926 he returned to
Jesselton onboard the SS Marudu. [25]
Elsie remained in Menton with her two
girls, who attended a local school.
Vera wrote that her days there were the happiest she could remember. Of
her mother’s life she wrote: “We were sure of finding Mummy if we asked
everyone we knew. She would be established in a deck chair in the shade of the
bushes near the bandstand with chance acquaintances”. [16]
Ernest continued to commute between
Borneo and Europe:
In October 1929 he sailed home on the
P&O Karmala. [26]
In June 1930 he sailed back to
Singapore on the P&O Morea. [27]
In June 1933 he was onboard the SS Kaisar-I-Hind
bound for Penang, Colombo, Bombay and Europe. [28]
In January 1934 he left London bound
for Singapore onboard the P&O Chitral. [29]
On 17 March 1937 he sailed to London from Singapore
onboard the Blue Funnel Line’s Sarpedon and departed on 27 August onboard the P&O Carthage
en voyage back to Singapore. [34]
Some of Ernest's work was publicised in the
1920s and 1930s:
In 1925 the British North Borneo
Company issued a paper written by him on Oil Palm Cultivation. [30]
In July 1926 the Straits Times reported
that Mr E Bateson, Agricultural Advisor and formerly Assistant Mycologist, was
controller of locust extermination operations in Jesselton. [31]
In October 1926 the Straits Times reported on
his experimental and sensationally successful treatment of diseased rubber
trees. [32]
His salary (in 1929) was reported to be $7714. [33] The family left Menton in 1930,
probably returning to England.
Where the girls went to school is not known, though they are believed to have attended the University of Paris
at the Sorbonne in the mid-1930s. Wendy married Kenneth Cluett, a credit manager, in 1938. They divorced in 1949,
when she married Tadeusz Horoch, a book-keeper and Polish count.
There were no children from either marriage. Vera married Alfred Blades, a pathologist, in 1939 and had 3 children.
They divorced in 1978. Ernest took early retirement in 1938. The British North Borneo Herald reported
his farewell dinner at the Railway Hotel, Jesselton, where the staff of the Rubber Restriction Department expressed their
gratitude and appreciation for his tenure as the Controller of Rubber and presented him with "a small cheque".
He left North Borneo onboard the SS Ktzjang (sic) to Singapore on 19 October 1938, continuing to London onboard the
Blue Funnel Patroclus. [35][36]
In the 1939 Register Ernest and Elsie were living
with her brother Jack in Twickenham. Ernest’s occupation was given as Director
of Public Company. This was likely to have been Sapong Rubber Estates Ltd. Sapong, the largest rubber plantation
in Borneo, was south-west of Jesselton. It also cultivated tobacco. By 1945, Ernest and Elsie were living
in a house they almost certainly built for themselves in Greville Park Avenue,
Ashstead in Surrey. In 1939, Greville Park Avenue had only
recently been constructed: a dozen detached houses had been built there. Three plots remained on the north-west side
of the avenue. [37] By the end of the War, 3 houses had been built on the
empty plots. One of them, Number 19, as it is known today, is a handsome 5 bedroom house set in pine woods.
In 1945 its occupants were listed as Ernest and Elsie Bateson. [38] They called it Far Fold, after the
smallholding near Oxenhope farmed by Ernest's maternal grandfather Benjamin Hartley. In 1950 Ernest was reported to be in Kuala Lumpur: he was listed as a member of the
Arts and Crafts Circle, a committee he had been associated with since 1921. [39] In 1957 he resigned as a director
of Sapong Rubber Estates Ltd. [40] Elsie died in 1971 at Little Denmead in
Epsom, where relatives of Vera’s husband lived. It is likely that after her death,
Ernest moved to Dorset to live with his daughter Vera. But his frailty soon
prompted a move into a care home in Blandford Forum, where he died in 1975 aged
92. 1 From
his curriculum vitae reported in SFPMA, 21 Nov 1910 2 Kew
Journal, Vol 1910 No 8 3 Passengers
leaving UK – National Archives 4 Report
that Mr E Bateson arrived in Siam having been sent by the FMS Government to
investigate the paddy system – TST, 18 June 1912 5 Report
on article by E Bateson in Agricultural Bulletin on the quality of the
plantation rubber tree – TST, 10 Dec 1913
6 The
Artificial Stimulation of Branching in Rubber Trees by E Bateson ARCSc,
Department of Agriculture, Bulletin No. 23, 1914, reported in TST 2 June 1939
p15 7 The
tapping of the Para Rubber Tree: some physiological experiments, Bateson
(E) – FMS, Department of Agriculture,
Bulletin No. 23, 8, 1914 8 Report
on article by Mr E Bateson on padi
experiments in Krian – SFPMA, 6 Jan 1914 9 Passengers
leaving UK – National Archives 10 Elsie
Prior / Bateson’s private letters 1911-1919 11 Mr
E Bateson was reported visiting Peradeniya Botanic Gardens in Ceylon on 21 Feb
1914 on his way home from Malaya. Appointed Mycologist in Borneo – TST, 12
March 1914 12 Report
by North Borneo State Rubber Limited, 20 July 1915 : "his appointment as
mycologist to our estate is most valuable..." 13 17
March 1914, Mr E Bateson and Mrs Bateson arrived in London onboard SS Nankin
from Port Swettenham (now Port Klang) 14 TST,
25 July 1914 15 Sept
1915, Mrs Bateson & child onboard SS Khyber from London to Singapore –
in Bookings to the Straits, Malaya Tribune, 20 Sept 1915 16 Vera
Bateson’s memoir 1916-1930 17 British
North Borneo Herald, 17 Sept 1923 18
“Bateson, Mrs E. - wife of a Government Mycologist who retired
about 1930; she collected plants for Dr E. D. Merrill in Br. N. Borneo,
e.g. a no 59 = Homonoia riparia Lour, near Maruda Bay (June 1923)
cf. Merrill - Philip. Journ. Sci. 30, 1926, p. 81” - listed in Cyclopaedia of Malesian Collectors,
National Herbarium of Netherlands, 2017 19 “Here
we suffer, as do others, from the tyranny of servants…” – SFPMA, 6 July 1926 20 TST,
27 Aug 1919 21 Outgoing UK passengers,
P&O Manela, 10 June 1921 22 SFPMA,
31 May 1924 23 SFPMA,
5 June 1925 24
Outgoing UK passengers, Haruna Maru, 26 Sept 1925 25 SFPMA,
29 June 1926 26 SFPMA,
18 Oct 1929 27 STS,
17 June 1930 28 SFPMA,
23 June 1933 29 STS,
17 Feb 1934 30 Oil
Palm Cultivation by E Bateson, 1925 – held by The National Archives, Kew 31 TST,
16 July 1926 32 TST,
13 October 1926 33
In 1929, the Dominions Office and Colonial Office List, a kind of trades directory, noted that
Ernest's salary in this post was $7714 (Malay dollars), about £900.
34
Malay Tribune, 11 Sept 1937 and Straits Budget, 25 March 1937 35
British North Borneo Herald, 15 October 1938 36
Morning Tribune, 26 October 1938 37 1939
Electoral Register for Parish of Ashstead 38 1945
Electoral Register for Ashstead West 39 TST,
24 Sept 1950 40 TST,
21 May 1957 References
SFPMA = Singapore Free Press & Mercantile Advisor
TST = The Straits Times
For comparison, in the 1930s the UK Minister of Agriculture had a gross salary of £2000 (Hansard, 25 March 1936). The tax rate was 20-25%.
Ernest would probably only have paid income tax for the years 1917 to 1922. (p 532, A Community of Prestige:
a Social History of the Cosmopolitan Elite class in colonial Singapore, E. Holmberg, 2009)
“Members of the Malay Civil Service were allowed six months' leave every four years.”
(malayanvolunteersgroup.org.uk/malayan-civil-service-by-anne-hinam.html)
