Author: Thompson, Henry
Biography:
THOMPSON, Henry (c. 1785-1834: findmypast.com)
The first edition of Thompson’s didactic poem (with extensive prose notes) was entitled Gynaecium: or, Hints for the Nursery and was published anonymously in 1812. It was intended to guide new mothers and their advisers through the dangerous early days of infancy, with up-to-date information about breast-feeding, exercise, vaccination, teething, common ailments, etc. A surgeon with a practice in Enfield, London, Thompson was successful in securing permission in 1817 to dedicate the revised second edition (under a less obscure title, The Nursery Guide) to HRH the Princess Charlotte, who was pregnant at the time. But Charlotte died just hours after her still-born baby. The attendant obstetrician committed suicide. Thompson postponed publication until 1822. His book was well received, the Medical Intelligencer describing it as “a medical treatise, written in very good blank verse.” Thompson’s origins are obscure; his birthdate is calculated from the death notice. He married twice and had one child with each wife. His first wife was Harriet Butler Midford (1791-1816), married at St. Mary’s, Newington, Lambeth, on 14 Sept. 1813; his second Jane Dowdeswell Harcourt (1797-1869), married at St. Andrew’s, Enfield, on 13 May 1820. He graduated MD at Edinburgh with a Latin dissertation on puerperal (childbed) fever in 1825. By 1831 he had moved to Sussex, where he was declared bankrupt. He died on 17 Dec. 1834 at Little Bath House, Tunbridge Wells, Kent, aged 49, leaving an estate of under £400, still in administration at the time of his widow’s death in 1869. (ancestry.co 21 Aug. 2024; findmypast.com 21 Aug. 2024; Medical Intelligencer No. 27 [Jan. 1822], 242; MR ser. 2 Vol. 101 [1823], 215-16; Morning Post 2 Jan. 1822; London Gazette 15 Mar. 1831; West Kent Guardian 27 Dec. 1834; information from AA) HJ