Thomas Fermor-Hesketh, 1st Baron Hesketh

Thomas Fermor-Hesketh, 1st Baron Hesketh (17 November 1881 – 20 July 1944), known as Sir Thomas Fermor-Hesketh, Bt, from 1924 to 1935, was a British peer, soldier and Conservative Member of Parliament.

Hesketh was the son of Sir Thomas George Fermor-Hesketh, 7th Baronet, and Florence Emily Sharon, daughter of U.S. Senator William Sharon. He was educated at Eton, the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, and Trinity College, Cambridge.

He achieved the ranks of 2nd Lieutenant in the Royal Horse Guards, Captain in the Lancashire Hussars Yeomanry and Honorary Major in the Territorial Army and also served as a Justice of the Peace for Lancashire and for Northamptonshire. Hesketh sat briefly as a Member of Parliament for Enfield from 1922 to 1923 and was later High Sheriff of Northamptonshire in 1932.

He succeeded his father as eighth Baronet of Rufford in 1924 and in 1935 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Hesketh, of Hesketh in the County Palatine of Lancaster.

Lord Hesketh married Florence Louise Breckinridge, of Kentucky, daughter of John Witherspoon Breckinridge, and granddaughter of General John C Breckinridge, Vice-President of the United States, in 1909. They had three sons and two daughters (Flora and Louise ). Their eldest son Lieutenant the Hon. Thomas Sharon Fermor-Hesketh was killed in an aeroplane accident in France in 1937. Lord Hesketh died in July 1944, aged 62, and was succeeded in his titles by his second son Frederick. His third son John married Patricia Macaskie Cole in 1946. His grandson Alexander Fermor-Hesketh, 3rd Baron Hesketh, is a former Conservative government minister. Florence, the Dowager Lady Hesketh died 1956.