Thomas Patrick Murphy was born in Liverpool, England on 27 March 1884 and baptised in St Anthony’s Church on 1 April.
Hailing from a Roman Catholic family, he was the son of an Irish father Joseph Murphy, a shipwright, and Margaret Lynch, who herself was of Irish descent. He had an elder sister and a younger brother and by 1901 the family lived at 6 Pleasant Square in Kirkdale.
Murphy initially apprenticed as a boilermaker but later worked as a ship’s cook, later serving aboard numerous voyages of the Carmania and Saxonia.
In April 1912 Murphy was serving as a ship’s cook aboard the eastward-bound voyage of the Carpathia when that ship rescued the survivors of the Titanic.
Following the Titanic disaster Thomas Murphy continued to work at sea but his whereabouts after the early 1920s remain unclear.