Background
Yeatman was born at Manston House, Dorset, the younger son of Harry Farr Yeatman Justice of the Peace by his marriage to Emma, daughter and heiress of Harry Biggs, of Stockton House, Wiltshire.
Yeatman was born at Manston House, Dorset, the younger son of Harry Farr Yeatman Justice of the Peace by his marriage to Emma, daughter and heiress of Harry Biggs, of Stockton House, Wiltshire.
He was educated at Winchester College and Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he was a Dixie Scholar, and eventually (1905) an Honorary Fellow.
He was ordained in 1869 and after a curacy in Salisbury became chaplain to the bishop in 1875. He was successively vicar of Netherbury and Sydenham before becoming Suffragan Bishop of Southwark in 1891, a post he was to hold for 14 years before elevation to the Bishopric of Worcester in 1905. In 1918 he took on the task of reviving the Coventry diocese, during which time he came to national prominence when an unscrupulous adventurer accused him of influencing a vulnerable pensioner into leaving him her assets.
Not only were the charges completely unfounded, the much smaller sum he had received was quite properly re-distributed to worthy Anglican causes.
After Yeatman-Biggs"s death, a bronze effigy of him was commissioned by Hamo Thornycroft, and was the only artefact to survive more or less intact the bombing of Coventry Cathedral in 1940.