[1] The paternal great-grandmother, a Highlander, and a Jacobite, and it was said in one source that she changed clothes with Prince Charlie and allowed herself to be taken in his stead, till he was well away.

[2] The father, Hannibal, had visited Germany during the French period, and recited his perceptions of battles, sieges, and escapes.

[5] In 1850, in London, she married Dr. James Bowen Thompson,[6] a Scottish physician and missionary[1] of similar religious sympathies.

He had large plans for Syria, and hoped to open it out by providing railways to India along the valley of the Euphrates.

In pursuance of this scheme, the husband and wife went first to Constantinople, and then settled on some property which the doctor owned near Antioch.

When the Indian Rebellion of 1857 (1857–58) followed the Crimean War, Bowen Thompson joined the Lady Mayoress' Committee at the Mansion House and threw herself into providing necessaries for the sufferers.

[2] The massacre of the Maronites by the Syrian Druses during the 1860 Mount Lebanon civil war attracted Bowen Thompson's sympathy.

"[2] In 1860, the plan for an industrial refuge -an association for the improvement of the condition of the Syrian women- rapidly formed itself in her mind.

This all enabled her to set up the British Syrian Schools Association, which would eventually form part of the wider work of the Middle East Christian Outreach organisation (1959) and then SIM (Serving In Mission) in 2016.

[2] She also found it necessary to open a girls' school for the upper classes, who were willing to pay a fee for the privilege of having their daughters educated by an English woman rather than by the French nuns.

[10] Lord Shaftesbury was much interested in all that was being done, and gave the weight of his name and influence to procure Bowen Thompson the financial help she required.

Once, when money ran short and she could not pay her widows for their work, she called them and bid them all join in prayer with her to ask for help.

The women presented a purse of piastres on leaving the school, and when Bowen Thompson came to count the coins, she found that they totalled up to three Turkish liras, or exactly the sum which was needed to pay her widows.

[2] In the early summer of 1862, the schools were visited by the then Prince of Wales, His Majesty, King Edward VII.

After some practical questions which proved how thoroughly he comprehended what was being done, the Prince contributed 25 Napoléons to the school, and gave a large order for embroidery.

When Canon Henry Baker Tristram visited the neighbourhood, some while after, the women inquired if he had any things which needed to be washed, or clothes to be mended.

[2] In 1867, the governor of Mount Lebanon, Daoud Pasha was so impressed by Bowen Thompson that he gave her his confidence and support.

Having found the right teacher, she arranged to pay her a monthly salary The Maronite priests were opposed to starting a school at Zachleh, but they protested in vain.

[2] Bowen Thompson could not have set on foot so many branches of work had not her sister and brother-in-law (Mr. Mentor Mott) from England joined her.

Their home in England having been burned down (all family records and correspondence were destroyed by the fire which consumed their mansion at East Coombe two months after Bowen Thompson left for Syria),[11] they resolved, rather than rebuild, to put their means and their lives to work for the Syrian people.