English trance medium, whose powers were developed at Frederic W. Thurstan's Delphic Circle at Hertford Lodge, Battersea.  In her early sittings in 1897 and 1898 the records of  which in  "Light"  refer to her as Mrs. T., she exhibited powerful physical phenomena, raps, movements of  objects, psychic lights, elongation, direct voice, apports, scents and materialisations.  Her physical manifestations were discouraged by F. W. H. Myers and she was persuaded to give her services to the S.P.R. as a trance medium from 1898 onwards.  Her chief control was her deceased daughter, Nelly, who died in infancy.  Another communicator of importance was Mrs. Cartwright, the mistress of  the school where Mrs. Thompson was educated.  Her trances were much lighter than Mrs. Piper's and occasionally they were scarcely distinguishable from the state of  normal wakefulness.  Many instances of  her supernormal perceptions were recorded in the waking state. Against Dr. Hodgson, who, in six sittings, formed an unfavourable opinion of  her powers, it is Frank Podmore who hurries to Mrs. Thompson's defense and considers Dr. Hodgson's conclusion that Mrs. Thompson is untrustworthy to go beyond the warrant of  the facts.  He expresses his opinion in plain words:  "I should perhaps add that the supernormal source of  much o f the information given at Mrs. Thompson's séances seems to me to be almost beyond dispute."  The reports of Mr. Piddington and Dr. van Eeden contain many curious accounts.  Mrs. Verrall had 22 sittings.  She made statistical calculations and found that out of  238 definite statements referring to things past and present, 33 were false, 64 were unidentified and 141 - 59 percent were true.  Of  these 141 true statements 51 could not have been ascertained from normal sources.  The results of  Dr. van Eeden were very convincing.  He came from Holland with an article of  clothing that belonged to a young man who first cut his throat and then shot himself.  He obtained dramatic communications and spoke in Dutch, of  which language Mrs. Thompson is ignorant, with the young suicide.

Mrs. Verrall's general opinion of  the controlling personalities was that their characteristics are not very marked, all bear strong resemblance to Mrs. Thompson, the voice was hardly to be distinguished from hers and the words and phrases were such as she herself  used in the normal state.  Nevertheless she admits that many personalities bore, for the sitters, the marks of  independent individuality.

Myers, whose belief  in survival was chiefly founded on experiments with Mrs. Thompson  (he and his friends had 217 sittings about two thirds of  which he personally attended)  died on the 17th  January 1901.  Mrs. Thompson, at this time, had already suspended sittings altogether.  Feeling an impulse to do so she gave two sittings to Sir Oliver Lodge.  In both of  them communications, characteristic of Myers, were forthcoming.

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