Tom Lingard moved into 13 Coronation Street with his wife Nellie and their daughter Ada in 1919. The house was let to the Lingards by Charles Hardcastle as a thank-you to Nellie for her faithful service at Hardcastle's Mill. A second daughter, Mary, was born in 1921.
Tom was a gardener and usually worked on council contracts. His biggest job was the re-development of the old Weatherfield Main Colliery site into a park surrounding the new Town Hall. The project wasn't completed until 1928. After this, Tom was due to begin a new landscaping job when he went missing on his way to work. On 30th January 1929, his body washed up at Blackpool's Central Pier, without any indication of what had happened to him.
- Tom first appeared in Daran Little and Bill Hill's "Weatherfield Life", published in 1992. Other information is derived from Little's follow-up book, "Around the Coronation Street Houses".