Ralph Wood Thompson

Sir Ralph Wood Thompson, Knight [Commander of the Order of the Bath|KCB], PC was a British civil servant.
Thompson was the son of Jonathan Thompson of Sherwood Hall, Nottinghamshire, receiver-general of Crown rents for the northern counties, by his wife Anne, daughter of Ralph Smyth, colonel in the Royal Artillery. A brother, Captain Henry Langhorne Thompson, gained fame for his part in the defence of Kars.
Thompson joined the Colonial Office as a clerk in 1853. He became Registrar in the War Office in 1854, Chief Clerk in War Office in 1871, Assistant Under-Secretary of State for War, 1877, and Permanent [Under-Secretary of State for War] in 1878. He retired in 1895.
He was appointed a Commissioner for the Patriotic Fund in 1881.
Thompson was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath in 1877, promoted to a Knight Commander in 1882, and was appointed to the Privy Council in Lord Rosebery's resignation honours list in 1895.
Thompson married in 1856 Agatha Vaughan Cornish, daughter of Rev. George Cornish, rector of Kenwyn, Cornwall. She died in 1861. The colonial administrator Sir Harry Langhorne Thompson was their son.
He died in London on 1 December 1902.