Thomas Fresh

[1] Thomas Fresh was born on 3 September 1803 at the family farm 'Newbarns', in the village of Newbarns, in the Lake District parish of Dalton-in-Furness.

[1] Fresh was appointed Liverpool's Inspector of Nuisances by the Borough's Health of the Town Committee on 4 September 1844, over two years before the celebrated appointments on 1 January 1847 of William Henry Duncan, as Britain's first Medical Officer of Health, James Newlands as the first Borough Engineer, and Fresh’s own re-appointment under the Liverpool ‘Sanatory’ Act of 1846.

With no trained staff to call upon, and with no established systems or infrastructures, Fresh created a model sanitary department, and became nationally famous.

[1] In 1853 Thomas and Martha Fresh were living in a much extended and improved former agricultural cottage on his 'model farm' in the Formby district between Liverpool and Southport when, on behalf of local residents and the joint Lord of the Manor, he asked the directors of the Liverpool, Crosby and Southport Railway to construct a station at that point on the line.

He arranged for a part of it to be transported from Liverpool to Freshfield for use as fertiliser on hitherto unproductive nearby fields, helping to develop a local trade in potato and asparagus cultivation.