Up the Gatineau! Article

This article was first published in Up the Gatineau! Volume 16.

Richard Rowland Thompson, 1877-1908

Graeme S. Mount

Born at Cork, Ireland, the youngest of eight children of candy manufacturer Samuel N. Thompson and his wife Frances Henry, Richard Rowland Thompson completed his secondary schooling in that city’s Royal University of Ireland in 1892. From 1895 to 1897 he began to study subjects related to medicine at Queen's College of Cork: physics, chemistry, botany, zoology, anatomy and physics. Apparently an avid football player¹ but an indifferent student, there is no record that he wrote a single examination. Indeed, college authorities referred to his "very bad attendance" at lectures².

After leaving university, Thompson migrated to Canada, and at the outbreak of the Boer War in 1899 was living in Ottawa. As an Anglican from Cork³ with relatives in Cape Town⁴, he may have felt particularly supportive of British imperialism. He quickly volunteered for military duty in South Africa, where he became one of eight men — and the only soldier from Canada - to win the Queen's Scarf of Honour.

As a soldier, Thompson served as a medical assistant with the 2nd Special Service Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment. On the battlefield, Private Thompson repeatedly ignored enemy fire and personal danger in order to offer medical assistance to wounded comrades. At the bloody battle of Paardeberg (18 February 1900), where Canadian troops helped to win a spectacular victory, he remained seven hours in an exposed position so that he might maintain pressure upon the jugular vein of an injured man, James L. Bradshaw. Then on 27 February 1900 he again helped wounded soldiers at Paardeberg in defiance of enemy fire⁵.

Recommended for the Victoria Cross, Thompson instead received the Queen's Scarf of Honour, designed and knitted personally by Queen Victoria to honour heroic soldiers. The award of the Scarf was a direct result of Thompson's actions at Paardeberg. Candidates for the scarf faced a thorough screening process; they had to be nominees for the Victoria Cross and winner of a vote of confidence from fellow soldiers on the battlefield⁶. Thompson also received three clasps and the Queen’s Medal because of his work in South Africa.

In October 1900, Thompson returned to Canada because of injuries related to sunstroke. Then he returned to South Africa as a lieutenant in the South African Constabulary, a position he kept less than a year before accepting employment with the DeBeers Diamond Corporation at Kimberley in Cape Colony. In South Africa on 25 June 1904 he married Bertha Alexander, whose family lived near Meech Lake. The two had met in Canada in 1898, and she sailed to South Africa to marry him⁷. They had no children. Thompson’s stay with DeBeers was also brief. When Thompson suffered a lethal attack of appendicitis and died 6 April 1908, he was in Buffalo, New York⁸.

The 43rd Ottawa and Carleton Rifles gave Thompson full military honours at his funeral in the Canadian capital, after which he was buried at New Chelsea, Québec. Largely forgotten for many years, Thompson became an object of further study after a June 1964 article in the Ottawa Journal prompted investigations which uncovered further biographical details⁹. On 24 May 1965 at a special ceremony on Parliament Hill, M.F.S. Thompson of Cork, Ireland, Richard Thompson's nephew, presented the scarf to the Governor-General on behalf of the people of Canada¹⁰.

Richard Thompson had two sisters and five brothers, including Robert, a team-mate on the football team at Queen's University of Cork, and William, with whom he corresponded from the battlefield at Paardeberg¹¹.

References

1. The Quarryman (the student newspaper at Queen’s College of Cork), II, 5 (April 1915), p. 109.
2. Statement of S.F. Thompson, Cork, deposited at the National Archives of Canada, Ottawa (NAC).
3. Document form the Canadian Special Service Forces: South Africa, 1899-1900, R.G. 38, Vol. 104, NAC.
4. A note from his commanding officer, M.L. Hearn, signed at Wynberg Hospital, 28 May 1900, gave Thompson permission to visit those relatives.
5. For further information on the Battle of Paardeberg and its significance, see Thomas Pakenham, The Boer War (London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1979 [1980]), pp. 299-342.
6. W. Sanford Evans, The Canadian Contingents and Canadian Imperialism: A Story and A Study (Toronto, The Publishers’ Syndicate, Ltd., 1901), pp. 233-234; Captain Louis Mackay, "Forgotten Soldier", Sentinel 1986/1987, pp. 10-ll; an excerpt from a book by Mrs. MacLeod, For the Flag (Charlottetown, Archibald Irwin, 1901), p. 118; letter of James L. Bradshaw to Richard Thompson, 9 April 1900, NAC; letter of Richard Thompson, South Africa, to his brother Bill, Ottawa, 19 February 1900, NAC; notes of Richard Thompson, NAC; statement of Colonel B.H. Vidal, Acting Adjutant General, Ottawa, 2 September 1904, NAC. See also the document “Special Service in South Africa: Invalided Solider”, and the letter from Colonel W.D. Otter, Thompson's Commanding Officer, Ottawa, 15 Ju1y 1901, both in R.G. 38, Vol. 104, NAC.
7. Ottawa Valley Journal, 22 May 1904.
8. For further details of Thompson's death, see The Ottawa Citizen, 7 April 1908.
9. Robert Fothergill, "Victoria's Highest and Rarest Award for Valor Won by Ottawa Soldier in South African War", Saturday Section, Ottawa Journal, 20 March 1965.
10. A copy of the programme is stored at the NAC.
11. Letter to the author from Samuel Thompson, a resident of Dublin and son of William Thompson, 2 May 1989.

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