William Thompson

Sir William John Thompson (May 1861 – 9 June 1929) was a physician who became Registrar General for Ireland from 1909 to 1926.

Life He was born in Tattyreagh, County Tyrone to farmer William Thompson, in May 1861. He was educated at Enniskillen, at Trinity College Dublin and at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Dublin. He graduated MD in 1895 and became a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in Ireland in 1902. Thompson married Mary Louise (née Wilson) on 9 September 1891. On 9 June 1929, he died in this home, 59 Fitzwilliam Square, Dublin. Thompson was in this office during the Spanish flu epidemic, and noted that the Irish deaths attributed to it were conservative. He was appointed Chairman of Census Commission in 1911, overseeing the first census of the Irish Free State in 1926. He served as the 26th president of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland from 1918 to 1920.

Thereafter held a large number of other positions, dealing both with medicine and statistics.

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