Thomas Breckenridge was an Edinburgh boy, albeit that his father, a shoe-maker cum leather merchant, hailed from Ayr and his mother from Glasgow. He was born in Gorgie, would, however, be raised, probably above the shop, right in the centre of the city in the St. James Quarter, would die at just thirty-three in Abbeyhill and in between have a five-year football career with two of the three major local teams, including in 1888 a single international cap.

At nineteen Thomas, a left-winger, was playing for Hearts, getting into the first team at about twenty-one also and going on to represent Edinburgh. But after two years he first left to join Leith Athletic and then seemed a year later at just twenty-four to fall out of love with the game, hanging up his boots and, as a bookbinder to trade, concentrating on business. His father having died in 1878, his mother is recorded as a Shoe Binder, with his sister keeping the shop that he and his mother shared. 

However, he did in 1893 marry, his wife Manchester-born Sarah Harrison, and with her he moved to Abbeyhill. However, the marriage was to be literally short-lived. Thomas fell ill possibly with some sort of degeneration condition serious enough for him in March 1898 to be admitted to the Royal Edinburgh Asylum and by May to be dead at the age of just thirty-three. He would be buried in Warriston Cemetery. Sarah Breckenridge would in 1899 remarry still in the city, have a first there too before by 1902 moving with her new husband to Southampton, raising a family there and dying there too in 1953.