Art teacher. He studied at the Royal College of Art and was appointed headmaster of the Bootle School of Art on its foundation in 1900 as part of the Bootle Municipal Technical School. He exhibited very occasionally at the Liverpool Autumn Exhibitions between 1901 and 1914. On the closure of the School of Art in 1916 he became Bootle’s Director of Art, advising on the teaching of art in all Bootle Schools. According to Sarah Crellin, Bulmer was responsible for ‘the design of the stonework and the overall configuration’ of the Bootle War Memorial, 1920–22 (bronze figures by Hermon Cawthra). Bulmer was living at Higher Bebington, Cheshire, at the time of his death, 20 January 1963.
Ancestry website sources: 1939 England and Wales Register … Lancashire, Crosby; England and Wales National Probate Calendar … 1963.
Bibliography: Bootle trade and street directories and electoral registers; Borough of Bootle, Council Year Books; S. Crellin, ‘Hermon Cawthra’, Leeds University MA thesis, 1995 (copy in Henry Moore Institute Library); E. Latham, History and Bootle, Bootle, 1999, p. 148; E. Morris and E. Roberts, Public Sculpture of Cheshire and Merseyside, Liverpool, 2012, pp. 49–52.
Emma Roberts, 2012; revised, Terry Cavanagh, September 2025