Thompson was a strict vegetarian and teetotaler. He died of inflammation of the chest at Clounksen, Roscarbery, co. Cork, on 28 March 1833.
Thompson made every endeavour to give practical effect to his views. During his lifetime he gave money to assist the cooperative movement, and made provision for carrying on its propaganda after his death. By a will dated 1830 he bequeathed the bulk of his property, consisting of freehold estates in co. Cork, to trustees for promulgating the principles of Robert Owen, and aiding (says William Pare, one of his executors) the humbler classes in any practical operations founded on those principles. One clause of his will ran : 'To aid in conquering the foolish but frequently most mischievous prejudice respecting the benevolent but to the operators most unpleasant and sometimes dangerous process of examining dead bodies for the benefit of the living, I will that my body be publicly examined by a lecturer on anatomy on condition of his returning the bones in the form of a skeleton, natural or artificial, to be preserved in the Museum of Human and Comparative Anatomy, as my books are to be preserved in the library of the first Cooperative Community in Britain or Ireland.' Thompson's will was disputed by his heirs-at-law on the ground that some of its provisions were 'immoral.' The Irish court of chancery took a quarter of a century to decide the point, and ultimately gave judgment in favour of the plaintiffs.
[Leslie Stephen's English Utilitarians (1900), ii. 260 seq.; Anton Menger's Right to the whole Produce of Labour, English transl. with Introduction by Professor Foxwell, 1899; Holyoake's Hist. of Co-operation; J. S. Mill's Autobiography, p. 125.]
THORNE, Sir RICHARD THORNE- (1841–1899), physician, was the second son of Thomas Henry Thorne, banker, of Leamington, where he was born on 13 Oct. 1841. He was sent to school at Nieuwied in Rhenish Prussia, whence he was transferred to France at the age of fourteen, to attend, after a year's schooling there, the cours de troisième at the Lycee St.-Louis, Paris, where he gained two first prizes. He then returned to England and became a pupil at the Mill Hill school, from which he matriculated at the London University. He began his medical career as an apprentice to a medical practitioner in Leamington, afterwards entering as a student at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London. In 1863 he was admitted a member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, and served the office of midwifery assistant at St. Bartholomew's Hospital. In 1865 he became a licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians of London, and in the following year he graduated M.B. at the London University, with first-class honours in medicine and obstetric medicine.
From 1864 to 1866 he acted as junior resident medical officer at the Sussex House Asylum, Hammersmith, and in 1867 he was elected assistant physician to the general dispensary in Bartholomew Close, E.G., a post he resigned in the following year, when he was appointed physician to the Hospital for Diseases of the Chest in the City Road. From 1869 to 1871 he was assistant physician to the London Fever Hospital. He was chosen demonstrator of microscopic anatomy in the medical school of St. Bartholomew's Hospital in 1869, and from April 1870 he filled for a year the office of casualty physician to the hospital.
Thorne was first employed as a super-numerary inspector in the medical department of the privy council in 1868, and in this capacity he conducted several investigations in connection with outbreaks of typhoid fever with such marked ability that in February 1871 he was appointed a permanent inspector. He rose gradually from this position until in 1892 he succeeded to the post of principal medical officer to the local government board on the retirement of Sir George Buchanan [q. v. Suppl.] Thorne's knowledge of French and German, no less than his polished manners and courtly address, soon made him especially acceptable to his political chiefs, and he was repeatedly selected to represent this country in matters of international hygiene. Thus he was the British delegate at the international congresses held at Rome in 1885, at Venice (Paris sitting) in 1892, at Dresden in 1893, at Paris in 1894, at Venice in 1897; and was her majesty's plenipotentiary to sign the conventions of Dresden in 1893, Paris in 1894, and Venice in 1897, the last convention being very largely drawn up under his guidance. His conspicuous services were recognised by the government, who increased his salary in consequence of a recommendation made by a special committee in 1898.
At the Royal College of Physicians of London Thorne was admitted a member in 1867, and was elected a fellow in 1875; he acted as an examiner 1885-89, and was a member of council 1894-96. In 1891 he delivered the Milroy lectures, 'Diphtheria: its Natural History and Prevention.' He began to lecture on hygiene at the medical school of St. Bartholomew's Hospital in 1879,
