subs. (common).—1. Orig. a penny roll; hence (2) = bread, food: specifically a workman’s daily allowance carried in a handkerchief; (3) = goods supplied to a workman in lieu of wages; (4) = the TRUCK-SYSTEM (q.v.); (5) = a shop run on truck lines: also TOMMY-SHOP (or STORE); and (6) = a baker’s shop. Whence also SOFT (or WHITE) TOMMY (nautical) = (1) bread: as distinguished from biscuit or HARD-TACK (q.v.); and (2) soft solder (jewellers’); BROWN-TOMMY (GROSE) = ammunition bread for soldiers, or that given to convicts on the hulks; TOMMY-BAG = a workman’s scran-bag (or handkerchief); and TOMMY MASTER = an employer who pays in kind or by orders on tradesmen with whom he shares profits. As verb. TOMMY = to enforce (or defraud by means of) the TOMMY-SYSTEM.
1839. DE QUINCEY, The Casuistry of Roman Meals [Works, iii. 254]. It is placed in antithesis to soft and new bread, what English sailors call SOFT TOMMY.
1845. B. DISRAELI, Sybil; or, The Two Nations, III. i. The fact is, we are TOMMIED to death.
1866. S. LAYCOCK, Cheer Up a Bit Longer, in J. HARLAND, Lancashire Lyrics, 292.
| There ’ll be plenty o’ TOMMY an’ wark for us o, | |
| When this ’Merica bother gets o’er. |
1875. R. J. HINTON, English Radical Leaders, 145. The employers … supplied them [miners] with food in order that they might spend no money save in the truck-shops or ‘TOMMY-SHOPS.’
1874. E. B. TYLOR, The Philology of Slang, in Macmillan’s Magazine, April, 508. Halliwell sets down the word TOMMY, meaning provisions, as belonging to various dialects. It is now current among the ‘navvy’ class…. Hence … the store belonging to an employer where his workmen must take part of their earnings in kind, especially in TOMMY or food, whence the name of TOMMY-SHOP.
1884. GREENWOOD, The True History of a Little Ragamuffin, xv. ’Cos coffee wirout TOMMY don’t make much of a breakfus’.
7. (provincial).—A simpleton: a TOM-FOOL (q.v.).
8. See TOMMY ATKINS.
9. (Dublin University).—A sham shirt-front; a DICKEY (q.v.). [Cf. Gr. τομή = a section.]
10. (common).—A tomato: usually in plural.
c. 1889. Daily Telegraph [A Dictionary of Slang, Jargon & Cant]. Now that ‘love-apples’ have become cheap, the masses may be seen continually munching them, not only because the TOMMIES are nice, but because they are red.
