Born on 24 February 1878 the second son of John Albert Thompson, printer, and his wife née Stubley, he was educated at Liverpool College and at University College, Liverpool, where he graduated in 1903 through the Victoria University, just before Liverpool became an independent university. He won the Holt fellowship for 1903-04 and the Gee fellowship for 1904-05, and served as assistant lecturer in anatomy at Liverpool University. He was house surgeon at the General Hospital, Birmingham, in 1905. He practised for a short time at 35 Sydenham Avenue, Sefton Park, Liverpool, but in 1907 went to China for the Church Missionary Society. He served as surgeon to the Society's hospital at Pakhoi, South China, and from 1915 at their hospital at Yunnan-Fo. In 1929 he went to Shanghai as director of clinical research and experimental surgery at the Henry Lester Institute of Medical Research and visiting surgeon at the Lester Chinese Hospital. He married on 1 July 1912 Amy C. Bradley, who survived him with three sons and a daughter. After retiring from China, as a result of the Japanese invasion of 1938, he lived first at Cambridge and later at Bennetts, Appledore, Kent. Thompson died at Ashford Hospital, Kent on 13 February 1953 ten days before his seventy-fifth birthday. Publications: *The Canal system of England* [1903?] Surgical work in south China. Trans. *Far East Assoc trop Med*., 2nd Congr, Saigon 1911. Some surgical complications of pancreatic diseases, with J A Grey, FRCS *Ibid*. 9th Cong, Nanking, 1934, 2, 941.