Bathurst, Walter Dundas, 1859-1940

Walter Dundas Bathurst (1859-1940) was the son of Henry Thomas Dundas Bathurst (1811-1891), a career civil servant, and Margaret Ann Dundas Bathurst (1834-1916), of London. In 1883, he signed a contract with the colonizing entity Association Internationale du Congo (AIC) to serve for three years as an assistant at one of the association's stations.

Bathurst started his assignment in February 1884 at Vivi beyond Boma on the Congo River, where he came under the direct command of Sir Henry Morton Stanley. One of Bathurst's first tasks was to supervise road-building to link trading posts that had been established. In August 1884, Bathurst was sent to Kinshasa and worked alongside Anthony Bannister Swinburne, H.M. Stanley's former assistant. By the end of his term, Bathurst's role involved engaging in high-level negotiations, including those with high-ranking representatives of the Teke people.

After his service with the AIC, Bathurst, with help from his father, continued in his father's footsteps as a civil servant with the Exchequer and Audit Department. He started out as a senior clerk auditing the accounts of the Gold Coast and Lagos in 1889. His service required his residency in Gibraltar for a time in the early 1890s.

Bathurst was married to Alice Matilda Willis (b. 1862) from 1891 until her death in 1917. They had one child, Marjorie Dundas Bathurst (b. 1892). In 1919, Bathurst married Rhona Batstone (1887-1977) with whom he had a son, Thomas Dundas Bathurst (1919-2006).