William Hale Thompson

William Hale Thompson 1869-1944, American politician, b. Boston. His family moved to Chicago when he was nine years old, and there he later entered politics as an alderman (1900-1902). He became commissioner of Cook co. (1902-4) and served (1915-23, 1927-31) three terms as mayor of Chicago. A flamboyant figure, he attracted much attention during the 1927 mayoralty campaign by his tirades against England. As mayor he was criticized for his failure to take effective action against the gangs led by Al Capone and others. In 1936 he ran for governor of Illinois but was defeated.

Thompson, William (1775–1833), of Roscarbery, Co. Cork, socialist and feminist writer. The son of a rich merchant, John Thompson, a former mayor of Cork, he inherited 1,400 acres and several merchant ships in 1814. Writing that he felt ashamed of living off ‘the produce of the efforts of others’, Thompson gave his tenants very favourable leases, attracting the ire of his own class. A leading advocate of the co‐operative movement, he wrote many long treatises which were clear espousals of scientific socialism well ahead of Marx. With his lover Anna Wheeler (1785–1848), Thompson wrote the eloquently titled An Appeal of One Half of the Human Race, Women, against the Pretensions of the Other Half, Men, to Restrain them in Political and thence in Civil and Domestic Slavery (1825). His will, leaving everything to the co‐operative movement, was overturned by relatives after a lengthy law‐suit.

Peter Collins

Thompson, William Tappan (1812–82), Ohio‐born humorist of the Old Southwest, after 1835 lived mainly in Georgia, where for a time he was associated as a newspaper editor with A.B. Longstreet, his model in his humorous depictions of the Georgia cracker. His dialect short stories, which capture the quality of the oral storyteller, realistically portray the life of Georgia in the way Seba Smith's letters treat the Down East background. These tales are collected in Major Jones's Courtship (1843, enlarged 1844); Chronicles of Pineville (1845), republished as Scenes in Georgia (1858?); and Major Jones's Sketches of Travel (1848). In addition to his editorial work on various newspapers, Thompson wrote Rancy Cottem's Courtship (1879) and John's Alive …and Other Sketches (1883).