Page 40 - WHO'S WHO OF DUDLEY ROTARY

father had invested as a director of Helpman and Company, a speculative venture formed to
participate in the short-lived Klondike Gold Rush of 1896-1900. Hence Frank joined the
‘Helpman Expedition’ of 1897-99 to the Yukon in Canada. A party of 13 adventurers, mostly
active and retired army and naval officers led by Viscount Avonmore, assembled in Alberta in
December 1897 and during the following spring made their way to the Lesser Slave Lake where
they split into two parties. Hallwright’s group made its way to the Great Slave Lake and over the
next 12 months prospected for minerals over a wide area, staking a number of claims en route,
‘some of which were valuable, others worthless’. (In the event nothing came of them because
of the remoteness of the area, so the Helpman company was wound up in 1900.) Hallwright left
the Yukon in May 1899, calling at Ottowa to have his mineral samples assayed. He went on to
New York where, in October 1899, he married Lilian Burnham from Boston. In 1900 they
returned to Birmingham and he rejoined his father’s medical practice.
He was soon on the move. He became medical officer on the Canadian Pacific steamship
Empress of Japan which plied between Vancouver and Hong Kong, then early in 1903 he moved
to Hong Kong and set up a joint medical practice as Swan and Wright. However in summer 1904
he was Superintendent Surgeon for the voyage of the steamship Tweeddale from Hong Kong to
Durban, Natal carrying over 1000 Chinese ‘coolies’, the first batch of many thousands being
transported to the Transvaal goldfields to relieve the acute labour shortage there. Seven of the
Chinese died and 40 others were affected by beriberi on the journey but that was regarded as
an extremely low mortality rate. Dr Hall-Wright, interviewed in the Durban daily The Mercury,
concurred with the reporter that the despite the beriberi, the group were overall “decent
specimens of the heathen” and “in the pink of health (or the yellow of condition [as would] be
more appropriate).” He was probably medical officer on numerous of the similar voyages that
took place over the following three years. Then from 1908 to 1920 he lived in India, first in
Madras and then in Assam (where, apparently in an experiment to prove the connection, he
infected himself with the tropical ulcer Naga Sore by being bitten by ‘mango flies’).
It is not clear what became of his wife because she did not return to England when he set up
home at Kingswinford in 1920. In 1925, at the age of 56, Frank again visited Canada and New
York, but this time with his new wife Mary, 18 years his junior and born in Natal, South Africa
(although curiously they also went through a marriage ceremony in Bridgend, Glamorgan the
following spring).

110 John Fritz William BATEMAN (1878-1953) (Elected 7.12.1925; membership terminated
21.3.1927.) Estate agent. Principal of J Bateman, auctioneers and surveyors of Wolverhampton
Street, Dudley. The practice was founded by his grandfather, also called John, in the 1850s and
continued by his father Harry D Bateman under the name Bateman & Son from the 1870s. John
junior joined the firm on leaving school and became a partner about 1903. He was a keen
cricketer into his 30s, playing for Dudley 1st XI in the Birmingham & District League and being
team captain in 1911.

111 Garnet Frederick SPASHETT (1884-1955) (Elected 3.5.1926; resigned 22.4.1929.) Banking.
Manager of the National Provincial Bank, 48 High Street, Dudley from its opening in February
1923. He started straight from school as a clerk with National Provincial in Tottenham, London,
probably at the same bank where his father was a cashier. He then worked as a bank clerk in
Bristol before coming to Dudley. He moved from Dudley about 1931 to take charge of the
branch at Bushey, Hertfordshire. His last position was as manager at Worthing, Sussex. He
played bridge to a national standard.