Researching Henry Thompson

Henry Thompson was born in London on 2 April 1859, the son of Sir Henry Thompson, 1st Baronet and Kate Fanny Loder, the English composer and pianist. He was educated at Marlborough College and Trinity College, Cambridge. After careers in medicine and law (he was admitted to the Inner Temple in 1878 and called to the bar in 1882), he became interested in Egyptology. He was a lecturer and fellow at University College London, and chairman of the Golders Green Crematorium. There is a chair established in his name at Cambridge University; the Sir Herbert Thompson Professor of Egyptology.

He died on 26 May 1944 in Bath.

Thompson was a native of Pennsylvania, but spent much of his career in Ohio. He became a member of the United Brethren church and taught mathematics at several United Brethren colleges in the Midwest. Thompson served as president of Otterbein University from 1872 to 1886. Much of his time as college president was devoted to improving the financial standing of the school during the economic depression that followed the Panic of 1873.

Initially a Republican, he became an early member of the Prohibition Party. His attempt at election to the vice presidency in 1880, running on a ticket with Neal Dow of Maine, was the party's best showing to date, but they still placed a distant fourth to the eventual winners, James A. Garfield and Chester A. Arthur. He ran for office under the Prohibition banner several other times before and after 1880, all without success.

Born in Mold, Flintshire, Wales on 27 March 1871, he was ordained a priest of the Order of Saint Benedict on 19 October 1902. He was appointed the Bishop of the Diocese of Gibraltar by Pope Pius X on 10 November 1910. His consecration to the Episcopate took place on 21 December 1910; the principal consecrator was the Right Reverend Peter Amigo, Bishop of Southwark, with the Right Reverend Frederick Keating, Bishop of Northampton (later Archbishop of Liverpool) and the Right Reverend Francis Mostyn, Bishop of Menevia (later Archbishop of Cardiff), serving as co-consecrators.

Bishop Thompson resigned the episcopal see of Gibraltar on 25 May 1927 and appointed Titular Bishop of Thermopylae on 15 July 1927. He died on 27 October 1942, aged 71.