Born in Leicester, the elder brother of Frederick Bates. Educated at Billesden school until the age of thirteen when he was apprenticed to a hosiery manufacturer. Worked from 7am to 8pm but managed, nevertheless, to attend classes at the Mechanics Institute where he rapidly became a good Greek, Latin and French scholar, as well as becoming proficient at Drawing and Composition. Translated Homer before going to work in the morning, and read prodigiously. His brother Frederick remembered him saying that 'no one ought to make any pretensions to be considered a reader who had not twice gone through Gibbon's Decline and Fall. He considered travelling to Australia with Stephen Barton but the project fell through. Met A.R. Wallace in 1844-45 when Wallace was a tutor in Leicester, and in April 1848 set sail with him for South America, on the natural history expedition which was to lead to his publishing The Naturalist on the River Amazons (1863), the book for which he is beat known. Returned to England in 1859 and settled in Leicestershire where he married. In 1861 he took up the post of Assistant Secretary to the Royal Geographical Society which he held until his death, aged 68.
Bates's interest in natural history was first aroused by the friends he made at the Mechanics Institute, particularly John Plant and James Harley. His brother Frederick later recalled ‘I have no recollection of his specially pursuing any other branch than entomology ... Like most collectors he commenced with the Lepidoptera, but soon abandoned these for the Coleoptera... Never shall I forget his radiant joy ... when he once came bounding in, shouting in exultation, with his first capture of a 'Tiger' beetle, made in Anstey Lane... Our earliest collections, I well remember, were stored away in such places as table and wash-hand stand drawers. Our collecting nets too were very primitive - a loop of wire soldered into a tin socket to hold a stick... In those days the best collecting grounds were the parts of Charnwood Forest owned by the old Earl of Stamford ... Good Friday was always chosen as the first grand opening day of the season ... My brother used habitually to write a descriptive account of all these expeditions; he would also sketch and write out descriptions of all the principal insects captured'. On this early period and particularly his involvment with James Harley and Francis Plant, see Lott (2009), 5-9.
By the time his apprenticeship was nearing its end Bates had 'formed a very extensive collection of British beetles and was in correspondence with all the chief coleopterists of the time. The study of Coleoptera was a very different thing in those days to what it is at the present time. Then there was nothing much to enable the worker to determine his species but Stephens's Manual, and all who have puzzled over that book will know the difficulties. ... Among the friends made about this time was Mr E. Brown, of Burton-on-Trent, who interested himself in procuring my brother a situation as a clerk in Messers Allsopp's offices at Burton-on-Trent. He remained there until he had made arrangements to start on his memorable expedition...' (Proceedings Royal Geographical Society, Monthly Record of Geography, April 1892, 2-3).
Bates's first article entitled 'Notes on Coleopterous Insects frequenting Damp Places' was published in Zool., 1, 1843, 114-115. This was followed by more than one hundred papers covering entomology, mostly concerned with the Geodephaga and Longicornia, and other articles in the Athenaeum. Many of the more important pieces have been reprinted in E. Gorton Linsley (ed.), The Principal Contributions of Henry Walter Bates to a Knowledge of the Butterflies and Longicorn Beetles of the Amazon Valley, New York 1978.
F. Hope purchased Coleoptera including Cicindelidae (Megacephala) from the Amazon from Bates’ collections for the HDO in June 1858 and 1861. The NHM acquired extensive portions of Bates' collections from 1851 to 1870. This Museum also possesses two notebooks relating to insects of the Amazon Valley with many fine original water-colour drawings which cover the dates 1851-59. There is a pocket book used by Bates on his travels from 1848-1859 in the British Library, and correspondence between Bates and Henry Doubleday of 1864 is in the Passmore Edwardes Museum, Stratford, London. An unfinished mss on the classification of Carabidae which was ‘examined by Dr Sharp, Mr Rene Oberthur and Dr Horn and pronounced to be too incomplete for publication’ is in the RES (Pedersen 2002, 107) together with correspondence including letters to Roland Trimen (1863-67) and Herbert Druce (14 October 1891). Ashley Kirk Spriggs tells me that there are also specimens collected by him in the Rippon Collection, NMW.
The Plant Pathology Laboratory at Harpenden where B.S Williams was on the staff and built up a good reference collection there has some material. This collection was visited by Derek Lott in 1990 who recorded: ‘I looked over the ground beetles... and there were a number of Bates’ specimens there, though by no means anywhere near a complete set. Some specimens were labelled “F. Bates”, but these included specimens collected after Bates’ death, while other genuine Bates specimens were unlabelled. The localities will be difficult, probably impossible to identify from the labels that contain only numbers. Various bits of documentation have parted company with the collection at different times during its tortuous journey from owner to owner...Unfortunately [ the materials Donisthorpe passed to the NHM] appear to be of no use in interpreting the numbers on Bates’ labels’. Lott also visited Liverpool in 1985 and looked at the Williams collection and ‘although there may well be Bates specimens there’ he did not detect any (Lott 2009, 49-50). Simms (1968) notes Bates' material in the W.C. Hey collection in the Yorkshire Museum but it is not clear to which Bates he refers.
Gilbert (1977) lists seventeen obituaries and other notices, the most important of which are probably: that already mentioned above; D. Sharp in Ent., 25, 1892, 77-80; R. MaLachlan in Ent.mon.Mag., 28, 1892, 83-85; and F.D. Godman in Proc.ent.Soc.Lond., 1892, i-iv. (MD 12/21, 1/22)