Author: TOMPSON, Charles
Biography:
TOMPSON, Charles (1807-83: ADB)
He was born on 26 June 1807 at Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, the eldest of seven children of Charles Tompson (1784-1871) and Elizabeth Boggis (1792-1822) who had married on 8 June 1806 at St. Philip’s, Sydney. His father had been transported for seven years in 1803 after being convicted at Warwick assizes of stealing two books. He arrived in Sydney in 1804, and as a literate man was employed in the Office of the Commissioner and was also involved in the education of girls at the Female Orphan School, where he probably met his future wife. He later became a shopkeeper and general merchant, and eventually acquired a 700-acre farm, at Clydesdale, near Windsor. Charles Tompson (junior) was educated at the Castlereagh House seminary of Rev. Henry Fulton, who had been transported for his part in the 1798 Irish Rebellion. (Fulton had married his parents and baptised him.) There he received a classical education and developed an interest in poetry. On leaving the seminary, Tompson published his first poems in the Sydney Gazettein 1823 under the signature “Australasianus.” The Sydney Gazette also announced the forthcoming Wild Notes (1826), which he dedicated to Fulton. It was the first collection of verse to be published in the colony by a native-born Australian. On 5 Feb. 1822 he addressed a memorial to the governor, Lachlan Macquarie, who recommended he receive two hundred acres. He married Hannah Morris at St. Matthew’s, Windsor, on 12 April 1830. They lived at Kent Street, Sydney, while he was employed as a clerk in the Colonial Secretary’s office, where he remained until 1835. He left government service to pursue various farming ventures which failed in the depression of the 1840s. His land was sequestered in 1844. He went back into public service in 1847 and eventually rose to become Clerk of the Legislative Assembly at £800 per annum in 1860. He retired in 1869. His wife, Hannah, died on 12 Jan. 1874. After her death, he moved to “Teddington,” Glebe Point, where he died on 5 Jan. 1883 and was buried in Waverley cemetery. (ADB; Wild Notes [Facsimile], intro. G. A. Wilkes and G. A. Turnbull [1973], v-xvi; Sydney Gazette 9 Jan. 1826; Sydney Morning Herald 6 and 8 Jan. 1883; Elizabeth Webby, Early Australian Poetry: An Annotated Bibliography [1982], 6-8 et passim) AA