H. M. Bateman
British artist and cartoonist (1887–1970)

Henry Mayo Bateman (15 February 1887 – 11 February 1970, Mgarr, Malta) was a British humorous artist and cartoonist.
H. M. Bateman was noted for his "The Man Who..." series of cartoons, featuring comically exaggerated reactions to minor and usually upper-class social gaffes, such as "The Man Who Lit His Cigar Before the Royal Toast", "The Man Who Threw a Snowball at St. Moritz" and "The Boy Who Breathed on the Glass at the British Museum" which appeared in the satirical magazine Punch.
Early life
Henry Bateman was born in the small village of Sutton Forest in New South Wales, Australia. His parents were Henry Charles Bateman and Rose Mayo. His father had left England for Australia in 1878, at the age of 21, to seek his fortune. He returned to England briefly in 1885 before going back with an English wife. Soon after Henry was born, the family returned to London. Henry had one sister, Phyllis, three years younger.
From an early age, Bateman was enthusiastic about drawing.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “H. M. Bateman” is british artist and cartoonist (1887–1970). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Bateman, British and artist, not as a finished interpretation.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3124697. VIAF identifies the subject as 15009447. The Library of Congress control number is n83137270. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1887, 1970, 1878 and 1885.
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This entry incorporates text from “H. M. Bateman” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.