Author: THOMPSON, William Francis
Biography:
THOMPSON, William Francis (1810-42: PBI)
He was born on 16 Apr. 1810 and baptised at St. Mary, Lambeth, the youngest of five children of Richard Thompson, a Custom House officer and later Receiver for Out Ports, and his wife Mary Hunn. He attended Haileybury, the East India Company training college, and went out to India where he was appointed assistant magistrate and collector in Bareilly and later served in Bundelkhand, Delhi. He visited New South Wales in 1835 on medical leave and went from there to England where he married Jane Wilson on 31 May 1838 at Collingbourne Ducis, Wilts., with her father performing the ceremony. A son was born in England the following year and a daughter in India in 1840. On his return to India, he worked at Gorakhpur and then Agra, where he committed suicide on 20 Dec. 1842 for reasons unknown and by means unknown. He had “been for some time labouring under an aberration of mind.” He had previously been reprimanded and this may have been a factor. Both his volumes of poetry had been highly critical of British rule in India and may not have been well-received by the authorities. He printed but did not publish a collection of verse and prose by his brother, George Frewin Thompson (1804-34): Footsteps of One Departed [1839].He also contributed to the Bengal Annual and other periodicals. After his death his widow Jane returned to England, lived on an EIC pension, mostly with her daughter, Frances Jane, and died at 2 Christchurch Road, Folkestone, on 10 Oct. 1891, leaving an estate of just over £700 to her children. (BPI 2:1-2; Máire ní Flathúin, Modern Humanities Research Association Oct. 2020, 809-33; findmypast.co.uk 28 Jan. 2021; ancestry.co.uk 28 Jan. 2021; Monthly Repository 10 [1834] 45; Asiatic Journal Feb. 1843, 149; Liverpool Mail 11 Mar. 1843; Saint James’s Chronicle 9 June 1838, 25 February 1843; GM May 1843, 555; London Evening Standard 15 Oct. 1891; Morning Post 10 Oct. 1893; BL, India Office Records, Enlistment Papers, et al.) AA