Tom Tiddler’s ground, n. — Green’s Dictionary of Slang

Tom Tiddler’s ground n.

also Tom Tidler’s ground

[the children’s game Tom Tiddler’s ground, in which one player is ‘Tom’, who stands behind a ‘land’ which marks the ‘ground’. The other players dash forward over the ground, singing ‘We’re on Tom Tiddler’s ground, picking up gold and silver’, and the first or sometimes last child caught becomes Tom; Brewer, Dict. of Phrase and Fable (1894), suggests that Tiddler is an elision of t’idler]

1. anywhere that money or other items can be obtained easily.

1850		(con. 1848-9) W.R. Ryan Personal Adventures in [...] California I 204: Everybody was off to the real Tom Tiddler's ground, to pick up the gold and silver.
1859		Louth & N. Lincs. Advertiser 17 Dec. 2/6: Subsequent speculations have attempted to convert the desert into a Tom Tiddler’s ground and ignominiopusly failed.
1867		J. Greenwood Unsentimental Journeys 135: It is a sound, homely, sagacious organ, and though, at present, it has not scented out the way to Tom Tiddler’s ground, it has warned me of several paths promising enough to look at.
1878		N. Wales Chron. 31 Aug. 3/5: That new Tom Tiddler’s ground called the Isle of Man.
1879		Besant & Rice ‘The Seamy Side’ Appleton’s Journal (N.Y.) Nov. 407: He was about to enter the golden ground — Tom Tidler’s ground, where one day he too would be enabled to stoop and gather the golden nuggets.
1883		D.C. Murray Hearts II 79: He would coin a pile of money [...] from his own Tom Tiddler’s Ground.
1890		Bulletin (Sydney) 5 July 7/3: Rev. Charles Clark, after attracting crowded audiences at the Adelaide Town Hall, found a veritable Tom Tiddler’s ground at Broken Hill, where he and the Much-Travelled levied very heavy duties on the silver-miners. [...] [B]oth left the Barrier with sacks full of gold and silver.
1899		‘Pot’ & ‘Swears’ Scarlet City 190: Things going well on Tom Tiddler’s ground? Any pickings lying about?
1902		Sun. Times (Perth) 8 June 8/2: Lots of people are talking of going Johannesburg-wards [...] Particularly the brokers, who all seem to have satisfied themselves [...] that the Rand is going to be a regular Tom Tiddler’s for their ‘perfesh’.
1903		A. Binstead Pitcher in Paradise 118: The penitent woman stooped down to pick up [...] two sovereigns, a florin, a sixpence and a threepenny bit — apparently Dalzell had been run over on Tom Tiddler’s ground.
1910		Wodehouse Gentleman of Leisure Ch. iii: He discovered that El Dorado was no mere poet’s dream, and that Tom Tiddler’s Ground, where one might stand picking up gold and silver, was as definite a locality as Brooklyn or the Bronx.
c.1920		Harry Tate [perf.] ‘The Cabby’s Lament’ 🎵 Whilst in Piccadilly till crawling was stopped / Well, that was Tom Tiddler’s ground there.
1943		R. Llewellyn None But the Lonely Heart 304: It’s all tom tiddlers ground till something happens somewhere.
1943		Gloucs. Echo 24 Mar. 4/3: Tom Tiddler’s ground A new ‘crop’ of lost diamonds picked up in the kimberley district includes a stone weighing one an a quarter carats.

2. a no-man’s-land, a debatable territory.

1887		Star (Guernsey) 18 Oct. 4/6: Our part of Penge was called ‘Tom Tiddler’s ground,’ for nobody knew in what parish it was in.
1890–1904		Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues.
1926		Western Dly Press 10 Aug. 5/6: That part of the Downs [...] hasd become a veritable Tom Tiddler’s ground for different causes, and the air is filled with [...] harangues from rival platforms.
1961		(con. 1920s) J. Sparks Burglar to the Nobility 73: This is a Hall of flipping Justice, not a Tom Tiddler’s Ground for you Heavy Mob.