Born in Indianapolis, Indiana, Thomas was the son of actress Katherine Fletcher and Matheis ("Matt") V. Lingham, who was also a well known stage actor and leading player on Broadway in the late 1870s and 1880s.

[5][7] Then, during the early 1900s, Lingham acted with several stock companies in Indianapolis, Buffalo, Louisville, and Boston as well as being featured in a variety of Broadway plays, including an "all-star cast" adaptation of The Three Musketeers.

[8] By 1916, Lingham had established a reputation at Kalem, Signal Film Corporation, and at other California studios as a reliable supporting player and as one particularly skilled in portraying villains on screen.

In May 1916, Lingham and his wife Katherine Goodrich joined Signal cast and crew on location, traveling to Honolulu and Hilo, Hawaii to film the five-reeler crime drama The Diamond Runners.

[12] That same year, in its July 8 issue, the "photoplay" critic for Motion Picture News gives a complimentary review to the Western Medicine Bend, Signal's sequel to its popular release Whispering Smith.

[15]Throughout the rest of the 1920s and into the early years of the sound era, Lingham continued to perform regularly in pictures for various studios, often again as a "true-to-type villain" in Westerns, which remained very popular with American moviegoers.

[17] In that release presented by Lone Star Productions, "Tom Lingham" plays Sheriff Al Davis, whose time on the screen is short-lived, for the character is shot and killed in the first 10 minutes of the 54-minute film.

The United States Census for that year documents that he and his wife Alberta, who was long retired from her acting career, were still living in California, residing together in a $30-a-month apartment on Fountain Avenue in Los Angeles.

Sometime during the next decade, though, either for financial or medical reasons, Lingham relocated to the Motion Picture Country House, a retirement community for former film-industry employees in nearby Woodland Hills.