Thompson was a member of what can only be described as a terribly dysfunctional family. The fifth of seven children, he proved as difficult to his mother as the rest of her progeny. Ann Thompson had been deserted by her husband five years before the killing of Jamie Bulger, and in the week after he left the family home burned down in an accidental fire. Left on her own, Thompson sought consolation in drink and was often to be found in the bar in Higson's Top House rather than looking after the children in her chaotic home.
There it was bedlam. The author Blake Morrison obtained notes from an NSPCC case conference on the Thompson family. "The Thompson report is a series of violent incidents," he reported, "none of them in itself enough to justify the kids being taken into care but the sum of them appalling. The boys, it's said, grew up 'afraid of each other'. They bit, hammered, battered, tortured each other."
The report is full of violent instances, with details of such incidents as Ann taking her third son Philip to the police station after he had threatened his older brother Ian with a knife. Ian, aged 15, subsequently asked to be taken into care and when he was returned home he tried to kill himself by overdosing on painkillers. The notes record that Ann and Philip had also previously taken overdoses.
