Evelina Road, Peckham Rye, London, S.E.,
for an invention for raising sunken vessels by the displacement of water
within the vessels by air and gases."

At the time of his final capture Peace was engaged on other inventions,
among them a smoke helmet for firemen, an improved brush for washing
railway carriages, and a form of hydraulic tank. To the anxious
policeman who, seeing a light in Mr. Thompson's house in the small hours
of the morning, rang the bell to warn the old gentleman of the possible
presence of burglars, this business of scientific inventions was
sufficient explanation.

Socially Mr. Thompson became quite a figure in the neighbourhood. He
attended regularly the Sunday evening services at the parish church, and
it must have been a matter of anxious concern to dear Mr. Thompson that
during his stay in Peckham the vicarage was broken into by a burglar and
an unsuccessful attempt made to steal the communion plate which was kept
there.

Mr. Thompson was generous in giving and punctual in paying. He had his
eccentricities. His love of birds and animals was remarkable. Cats,
dogs, rabbits, guinea-pigs, canaries, parrots and cockatoos all found
hospitality under his roof. It was certainly eccentricity in Mr.
Thompson that he should wear different coloured wigs; and that his dark
complexion should suggest the use of walnut juice. His love of music was
evinced by the number of violins, banjoes, guitars, and other musical
instruments that adorned his drawing-room. Tea and music formed the
staple of the evening entertainments which Mr. and Mrs. Thompson would
give occasionally to friendly neighbours. Not that the pleasures of
conversation were neglected wholly in favour of art. The host was
a voluble and animated talker, his face and body illustrating
by appropriate twists and turns the force of his comments. The
Russo-Turkish war, then raging, was a favourite theme of Mr. Thompson's.
He asked, as we are still asking, what Christianity and civilisation
mean by countenancing the horrors of war. He considered the British
Government in the highest degree guilty in supporting the cruel Turks, a
people whose sobriety seemed to him to be their only virtue, against
the Christian Russians. He was confident that our Ministers would be
punished for opposing the only Power which had shown any sympathy with
suffering races. About ten o'clock Mr. Thompson, whose health, he said,
could not stand late hours, would bid his gues