Thomas Patrick Gerard Bateman was born in Katoomba, NSW, the son of a dentist Edmund Bateman, and Bernadette Rosalie Bateman (née Doran). He was educated at St Joseph’s College Hunter’s Hill and then at the University of Sydney, where as an undergraduate he lived at St John’s College. While at St John’s, he stroked the St John’s eight to victory in 1937 and 1938, and was also successful in tennis, cricket, football and billiards. After graduation from the University of Sydney in 1940, he was a Resident Medical Officer at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in 1941 and 1942.
By this time, World War II was in progress and he served as a Captain with the 2/5th battalion Australian General Hospital Division at Milne Bay Hospital, at the foot of the Kokoda Track. While at Milne Bay, he began a collection of butterflies and accompanied the Catholic padre into the New Guinea Highlands to assist him at Mass. This experience led to a great affection and admiration for the work of the religious, so that he always found time to serve them medically no matter how busy his practice.
After the war, he continued his studies and was a Fellow at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in 1946 and 1947, obtaining his MRACP in 1947. He set up practice in Macquarie Street and was appointed honorary physician at the Mater Misericordiae Hospital, North Sydney in 1947. In the same year, he was appointed assistant physician in charge of the Diabetic Clinic at St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney. This was one of the first two appointments to a special clinic within the Division of Medicine at St Vincent’s. He served in this capacity for 28 years and was a member of the Endocrine Society of Australia.
From 1947, he was a consultant physician to the Department of Mental Hygiene at Gladesville Mental Hospital. He was at the cutting edge of medicine in 1949, when he introduced a Danish drug, tetraethylthiuram disulfide (Antabuse) for treating chronic alcoholics; he had to import supplies and make up the capsules himself. In 1950, he was appointed by the NSW Government to serve on the Leucotomy Board. This committee of a neurosurgeon, a psychiatrist and a physician was to consider cases referred to it for treatment by leucotomy.
He lived at Wollstonecraft, and owned and operated a grazing property, 'Pomeroy' at Oberon. He was not a typical 'Pitt Street farmer', but worked hard on the property, mastering most of the necessary skills, and even at shearing time 'he liked to take part as the rouseabout'. He was a founding member of the Elizabethan Theatre Trust, and a subscriber to he Australian Opera, the Australian Ballet and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. He was an easygoing person with traditional tastes in ballet and opera, but any modernisation of his favourites always resulted in threats not to renew his subscription.
He married Beatrice McGirr, an arts-law student whom he met at university, in 1940. She died suddenly in 1960, from an asthma attack, leaving him a widower with seven children aged from 2 to 17. This changed his life dramatically, but despite his busy practice his children had an enviable family life. As his son Dr Edmund Bateman recounted at his funeral: 'Each event be it a Saturday's football, a birthday, a school play or whatever for each child was anticipated, discussed, planned for, celebrated, for each of us as if we were the only child in the family'. Two of his children followed him into medicine, while four followed their mother into law, and the seventh became a dentist.
He married again, but his second wife Marie also died before him. He eventually retired to his property ‘Pomeroy’, and after several years of declining health, died on 27 August 1998.