Captain Jocelyn Home Thomson

The Times - February 15, 1908 :Obituary

Captain Jocelyn H. Thomson, who is announced, in another column, to have committed suicide on Thursday, was the second son of the late Archbishop Thomson, Archbishop of York from 1863 to 1890, and was born in 1859.

He was educated at Eton and the Royal Academy, Woolwich, and entered the Royal Artillery in December, 1878. Soon after joining he served in the Zulu war of 1879 and was one of those sent in pursuit of King Cetewayo.

From South Africa Captain Thomson went to India, and he also served in Egypt in the Royal Horse Artillery. His taste for scientific pursuits led him to take up the study of astronomy, and in 1881 he made a tour of an the observatories in Western Europe. In the following year he was employed by the Royal Society to observe the transit of Venus in Barbados, and in a letter written subsequently to Archbishop Thomson by Professor Stone, of Oxford, who supervised the calculations of all the observations of the transit and issued the report on them, the following remarks as to the value of Lieutenant Thomson's work were made:-“His apparent contact agrees well with the other recorded contacts of the same phase, and his egress observations when the sky was clearer are perfectly satisfactory and agree very closely with the main results from the other recorded times."

Captain Thomson held various scientific appointments at Woolwich, including that of secretary to Sir F. Abel's Committee on Explosives, for whom he carried out all the first experiments on cordite. The name "cordite" was given to the explosive by Captain Thomson. From 1886 to 1902 he acted as officer of the Department of Artillery Studies, and in the last-named year was appointed second assistant to the Director-General of Ordnance Factories, a position which be held until 1893. He spent the summer of 1891 in exploring the interior of Iceland and in the autumn of that year he was sent to Canada to carry out tests as to the behaviour of cordite in a cold climate.

He was appointed Inspector of Explosives under the late Sir Vivian Majendie in June, 1893, and became Chief Inspector of the Department in August, 1899. During his spare time Captain Thomson was permitted to act as consulting engineer to the Cauvery electrical transmission scheme in Mysore, which appointment he held for five years, and also to the Jhelum Valley electrical transmission and railway scheme in Kashmir. In the former case he visited India to pass the plan for the Mysore Government. Last year he was made a C.B. Captain Thomson was the author of several works on explosives. He married, in 1886, Mabel Sophia, daughter of the Rev. Thomas Bradley Paget, of Chipping Norton.

Thomson, Jocelyn Home (1859–1908), chief inspector of explosives, was born at Oxford on 31 August 1859, the second of four sons of William Thomson (1819–1890), archbishop of York, and his wife, Zoë (d. 1913), née Skene. After education at Eton College, where he won the Tomline prize for mathematics, and the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, he entered the Royal Artillery in December 1878, took part in the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879, and then served as captain with the Royal Horse Artillery in India and Egypt.

An interest in science and especially in astronomy led Thomson to tour the European observatories in 1881, after which the Royal Society obtained leave for him to observe the transit of Venus from Barbados in 1882. Thomson then held various scientific appointments at Woolwich; from 1887 to 1892 he served on the staff of the department of artillery and stores, afterwards becoming an assistant to the director-general of ordnance factories.

In 1886 he married Mabel Sophia, daughter of Thomas Bradley Paget, of Chipping Norton; there were no children. During 1888 he was secretary under Sir Frederick Abel to the War Office explosives committee, for whom he carried out the first experiments on a new smokeless explosive. Thomson named this new substance cordite because it was extruded by the production machinery in the form of cords. This explosive was recommended to the government in 1890 and adopted for military use in 1893. Thomson spent the winter of 1891 in Canada testing the performance of cordite under cold weather conditions. In 1893 he was appointed inspector of explosives, succeeding Sir Vivian Majendie as chief inspector in August 1899.

For five years from 1900 Thomson took leave to act as consulting engineer in India to the project to carry electrical power from the Cauvery Falls to the Mysore goldfields, for which he visited Mysore, and then advised on a similar transmission and railway project in the Jhelum valley.

Thomson was a versatile mechanic; among the devices that he invented or improved were instruments for electrical telegraphy and petroleum testing apparatus. He also devised a position finder, for which the government war department awarded him £500. He wrote a number of reports and guides, both technical and popular, dealing with explosives and with the petroleum lamp.

In 1901 the Belgian government conferred upon him the order of Leopold. He was made a CB in 1907. In August 1907 Thomson suffered a nervous breakdown, which left him with occasional loss of speech and marked slowness of thought, infirmities that caused him considerable distress. On 13 February 1908 he shot himself at his residence at 18 Draycott Place, Chelsea. He was buried at Brompton cemetery.