Thomas Robinson "Shepherd Tom" Hazard (January 3, 1797 – March 26, 1886) was an American author, social reformer, and advocate of Modern Spiritualism.

[3] At twelve, Thomas enrolled in the Friends’ School at West Town, Pennsylvania but left to assist in the operation of the family's wool carding manufactures at Peace Dale.

[4] The facility was the first of its kind in the state; responsibility for the care of destitute and mentally handicapped citizens at the time fell largely upon local governments.

The abuse of disabled Rhode Islanders in rural localities exposed in the report helped abolish state policies which treated mental illness as a crime.

The author Maud Howe Elliott, a neighbor and childhood friend of the Hazard children, recalls Shepherd Tom's grief and subsequent obsession with “materialization, spirit life, mediums, psychic photographs.”[7] Hazard penned numerous firsthand accounts of spirit materializations and séances held in a dedicated room at his Portsmouth estate, Vaucluse.