class of disease. In 1863, when the king of the Belgians was suffering from stone, he was called to Brussels to consult in the case, and after some difficulties was allowed to perform the operation of lithotrity: this was quite successful, and in recognition of his skill Thompson was appointed surgeon-extraordinary to the king, an appointment which was continued by Leopold II. Nearly ten years later he carried out a similar operation on the emperor Napoleon, who, however, died four days after the second crushing, not from the surgical interference, as was proved by the post-mortem examination, but from uraemic poisoning. Besides devising various operative improvements in the treatment of the disorders which were, his speciality, Sir Henry Thompson wrote various books and papers dealing with them, including Clinical Lectures on Diseases of the Urinary Organs, Practical Lithotomy and Lithotrity, Tumours of the Bladder, Suprapubic Lothotomy, and Preventive Treatment of Calculous Disease. Among other books of a medical character that came from his pen were Food and Feeding, and Diet in Relation to Age and Activity, both of which passed through a number of editions. In 1874 he took a foremost part in founding the Cremation Society of England, of which he was the first president; and not only was he active in urging the advantages of cremation as a means of disposing of the body after death, but also did much towards the removal of the legal restrictions by which it was at first sought to prevent its practice in England. On various occasions he denounced the slackness and inefficiency of the methods of death-certification prevalent in Great Britain, and in 1892 his agitation was instrumental in procuring the appointment of a select committee to inquire into the matter; its report, published in the following year, in great measure confirmed his criticisms and approved the remedies he suggested. But medicine and hygiene by no means exhaust the list of Sir Henry Thompson’s activities. In art he was an accomplished sketcher and, moreover, an amateur of painting whose pictures were hung at the Royal Academy and the Paris Salon. About 1870 he began to get together his famous collection of china, in particular of old blue and white Nanking; this in time became so large that he could no longer find room for it, and most of it was sold. A catalogue of it, illustrated by himself and Mr James Whistler, was published in 1878. In his famous “octaves” he may be said to have elevated the giving of dinner parties into a fine art. The number of courses and of guests was alike eight, and both were selected with the utmost care and discrimination to promote the “feast of reason and the flow of soul.” In literature, in addition to more serious works, he produced two novels—Charley Kingston’s Aunt (1885) and All But (1886)—which met with considerable success. In science he became a devotee of astronomy, and for a time maintained a private observatory in his house at Molesey. He further did much to promote astronomical study in Great Britain by presenting Greenwich Observatory with some of the finest instruments now among its equipment, his gifts including a photoheliograph of 9-in. aperture; a 30-in. reflecting telescope, and a large refracting telescope having an object-glass of 26-in. diameter and a focal length of 2212 ft. The offer of the last instrument was made in 1894. Its manufacture was undertaken by Sir Howard Grubb of Dublin, and its erection was completed in 1897. It added greatly to the instrumental resources of Greenwich, especially for photographic work, and its importance may be gauged from the fact that both in aperture and focal length it is double the size of any instrument possessed by the observatory at the time it was put in place. That Sir Henry Thompson, who was knighted in 1867, received a baronetcy in 1899 was probably not unconnected with the presentation of this telescope to the national observatory. Thompson died on the 18th of April 1904. His family consisted of an only son, Herbert, a barrister and well-known egyptologist, who succeeded to the baronetcy, and two daughters, of whom the elder (author of a valuable Handbook to the Public Picture Galleries of Europe, first published in 1877), married Archdeacon Watkins of Durham, and the younger married the Rev. H. de Candole.
THOMPSON, SIR JOHN SPARROW (1844–1894), Canadian jurist and statesman, was born at Halifax, Nova Scotia, on the 10th of November 1844, of Irish descent. At fifteen he entered a lawyer’s office, and in 1865 was called to the provincial bar. In 1871 he incurred much odium by leaving the Methodist Church, in which he had been prominent, and becoming a Roman Catholic, a change dictated solely by religious motives. In 1877 he was elected to the local legislature for Antigonish as a Conservative, and in 1878 became attorney-general. In May 1882 he became premier, but in June was defeated at the general election, though retaining his own seat, and in July was made a judge of the provincial Supreme Court. In September 1885, he was appointed minister of justice in the Federal cabinet, and soon after was elected member for Antigonish. In 1886 he successfully defended in the Federal parliament the hanging of Louis Riel (q.v.), which had greatly angered the French Roman Catholics; in 1887–1888, together with Mr Joseph Chamberlain and Sir Charles Tupper, he arranged a Fisheries Treaty with the American commissioners, which was afterwards thrown out by the United States Senate. During the following years he defended the government with great skill in various politico-religious disputes, and in November 1892 succeeded Sir John Abbott as premier of Canada. The length of time during which the Conservatives had held office had gathered around many parasites, and Thompson was compelled to face charges, some of them true, against prominent Conservatives. He promptly announced his intention to “lop the mouldering branches away,” and would probably have reorganized his party, hut on the 12th of December 1894 he dropped dead at Windsor Castle, a few minutes after having been sworn in by Queen Victoria as a member of the privy council.
Though a quiet man who did not advertise, few Canadian statesmen have done so much honest and solid work. In 1892 he finished the codification of the Canadian criminal code; in 1893 his firmness and knowledge as British arbitrator at Paris on the Bering Sea dispute between Great Britain and the United States were of great service.
His Life has been written by J. C. Hopkins (Toronto, 1895).
THOMPSON, LAUNT (1833–1894), American sculptor, was born at Abbeyleix, Ireland, on the 8th of February 1833. In 1847 he emigrated to the United States, and settled with his mother at Albany, New York. After studying anatomy in the office of a physician, Dr Armsby, he spent nine years in the studio of the sculptor, E. D. Palmer. In 1857 he opened a studio in New York, and in 1862 became a National Academician. He visited Rome in 1868–1869, and from 1875 to 1887 was again in Italy, living for most of the time at Florence. He died at Middletown, New York, on the 26th of September 1894. Among his important works are: “Napoleon the First,” at the Metropolitan Museum, New York; “Abraham Pierson,” first president of Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut; an equestrian statue of General A. E. Burnside, Providence, Rhode Island; “General Winfield Scott,” Soldiers' Home, Washington, D.C.; “Admiral S. F. Du Pont” (Washington, D.C.); “General John Sedgwick” (West Point, N.Y.); a medallion portrait of General John A. Dix; and portrait busts of James Gordon Bennett, William Cullen Bryant, S. F. B. Morse, Edwin Booth as Hamlet, Stephen H. Tyng and Robert B. Minturn.
THOMPSON, THOMAS PERONNET (1783–1869), English political writer and mathematician, was born at Hull in 1783. He was educated at the Hull grammar school, and in October (1798) entered Queens' College, Cambridge. He entered the navy as midshipman in the “Isis” in 1803, but in 1806 exchanged to the army. Through his acquaintance with William Wilberforce, he was appointed governor of Sierra Leone in 1808, but was recalled on account of his hostility to the slave trade. In 1812 he returned to his military duties, and, after serving in the south of France, was in 1815 attached as Arabic interpreter to an expedition against the Wahabees of the Persian Gulf, with whom he negotiated a treaty (dated Jan. 1820) in which the slave trade was for the first time declared piracy. He was promoted major in 1825, lieutenant-colonel in 1829 and major-general in
