Thomas Perronet Thompson

Thomas Perronet Thompson (15 March 1783 – 6 September 1869)[1] was a British Parliamentarian, a governor of Sierra Leone and a radical reformer.

He specialized in the grass-roots mobilisation of opinion through pamphlets, newspaper articles, correspondence, speeches, and endless local planning meetings.

Thompson became Governor of Sierra Leone between August 1808 and June 1810, due in part to his acquaintance with William Wilberforce.

[4] In 1812, Thompson returned to his military duties, and, after serving in the south of France, was in 1815 attached as Arabic interpreter to an expedition against the Wahabees of the Persian Gulf, with whom he negotiated a treaty (dated January 1820) in which the slave trade was for the first time declared piracy.

[1] Monuments to his second son General Charles William Thompson, his youngest son Lieutenant Colonel John Wycliffe Thompson, who served in the Crimean War, and his youngest daughter Anne Elise are in the chancel of St Mary's Church, Cottingham, near Hull.

Thompson married Anne Elizabeth [Nancy] Barker; they had three sons, Thomas Perronet Edward, Charles William, and John Wycliffe.