The son of Thomas Dodd, a tailor, he was born in the parish of Christ Church, Spitalfields, London, on 7 July 1771.
His first employment was in the service of an Anglo-American colonel named De Vaux; an eccentric adventurer: he was taken about the country as a member of his band of juvenile musicians.
Harsh treatment induced him to seek the protection of a Welsh innkeeper; then he lived a while with a sporting parson, ultimately returning to London in 1788, and taking a menial position in the shop of his uncle, a tailor named Tooley, in Bucklersbury.
In 1839–41 Dodd made a catalogue, which remained in manuscript, of the Douce collection of fifty thousand prints in the Bodleian Library.
To Joseph Mayer he bequeathed his manuscript compilations and other collections, extending to about two hundred folios, and including his Account of Engravers.
T. DODD, The Connoisseurs Repertorium: Or a Universal Historical Record of Painters, Engravers Sculptors and Architects...from...the Twelfth Century to the Present Epoch, Manchester 1825.