Green’s Dictionary of Slang

toast.

1840

Flash Mirror 20: A round o’ burnt tommy and spread at six mag.

1. a food shop owned by an employer, who issues his workers vouchers, which can only be used at that shop; thus attrib. Tommy (shop) system, Tommy shopkeeper.

1829		Birmingham Jrnl 5 Dec. 1/6: Tommy Shops [...] To show whether or no ‘the workmen who receive their wages in goods or Tommy are the worse’, I will give a comparative view of the price of a few articles.
1829		Birmingham Jrnl 5 Dec. 1/6: The cunning, over-reaching, greedy Tommy shopkeeper.
1861		(con. 1840s–50s) H. Mayhew London Labour and London Poor III 410/1: There we had a tommy-shop, and we had to go there to get our bit of victuals.
1863		Empire (Sydney) 2 Sept. 5/3: it is a manifest breach of right, an unjust aggression on the interests of a fellow man, when an employer compels those who serve him to take goods supplied by himself, at an exorbitant rate, instead of the money to which they are fairly entitled. [...] such a mode of extortion, commonly called the ‘Tommy truck system,’ has been practised to a great extent.
1868		Bendigo Advertiser (Vic.) 4 Feb. 2/3: It is likely that he will be subjected to considerable questioning to-night concerning [...] what is called the tommy shop system, at the works carried on by Mr. O’Keefe, at Preston Yale, where Mr. Burrowes has a store.
1871		Ballarat Courier (Vic.) 16 Aug. 2/4: Hitherto, the popular belief has been that the ‘truck’ system consisted of orders being given by contractors to their men to obtain stores, &c., at what we believe is known as a ‘tommy shop,’ such shop being either the property of the contractors themselves, or owned at least by a trade connection.
1871		Birmingham Dly Post 7 Jan. 7/7: I have bought a piece of bee from the ‘tommy shop’.
1880		Northern Star (Lismore, NSW) 4 Sep. 1/4: Mr. Grimes had prudently invested his money in an establishment which in some parts of England, would be called a Tommy shop - a store in which all manner of groceries and such like articles are to be purchased.
1895		Queanbeyan Age (NSW) 22 Jun. 2/4: There are thousands of the unemployed now working [...] for rations which are valued at about 1s 10d per man, and this has given rise to a nickname for the Ministry, who are called ‘The Tommy Shop Government,’ owing to their revival of the old English system of paying men in small rations.
1895		Oakleigh Leader (Melbourne) 30 Nov. 3/6: He did not agree with contractors boarding their men. This was what is called the ‘Tommy’ or ‘Truck’ system, which had been adopted by some railway contractors.
1898		London Dly News 29 Oct. 2/4: These constitute the royal Victualling Yard [...] or the Navvy ‘Tommy Shop’ in the lingo of our merry tars.

2. a bakery.

c.1860		‘Famine Fast Day’ in C. Hindley Curiosities of Street Lit. (1871) 74: Th’ warehouses an th’ tommy shops aw breaking down wi’ stuff.
1873		Sl. Dict.
a.1874		Macmillan’s Mag. (London) XXIX 508: The store belonging to an employer, where his workmen must take out part of their earnings in kind, especially in tommy or food, whence the name of tommy-shop.
1880		D.W. Barrett Life and Work among Navvies 68: He opens a ‘tommy shop.’.

a conveyance bringing food to workmen.

1872

London Daily News 29 Oct. 5/5: Many of them [i.e. navvies] eat eighteen pounds of beef in the week [...] and as we look at them the ‘tommy truck’ makes its appearance.

brown bread.

1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue n.p.: Brown Tommy; ammunition bread for soldiers; or brown bread given to convicts at the hulks.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1830		Egan Finish to the Adventures of Tom and Jerry (1889) 147: The most delicate light french bread, now changed to brown tommy* [*Wholesome, but very coarse].
1834		Devizes and Wiltshire Gaz. 6 Mar. 2/4: Look here — this is not brown tommy .
1840		Western Times 13 Mar. 4/6: You would think so if you saw five or six rats staring at me while I was throwing them some of my brown tommy.
1849		Sam Sly 17 Mar. 3/3: [P]referring ‘grub’ of their own providing to the ‘brown tommy’ and blue milk of the governors.
1882		Godfrey Life of George Godfrey 15: I had no appetite for the brown ‘tommy.’.
1882		Sydney Sl. Dict. (2 edn) 2: Brown Tommy - Brown bread.

white bread.

c.1786		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue ms. additions n.p.: Tommy. Soft Tommy, bread is so called by Sailors to distinguish it from Biscuit.
1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue (2nd, 3rd edn) n.p.: Soft Tommy, or white Tommy; bread is so called by sailors to distinguish it from biscuit.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1831		Navy at Home I 3: She stowed away a certain quantity of new baked bread or soft Tommy.
1840		Southern Star 10 May 8/1: A passenger on rather a long voyage [...] complained [...] oft the hard biscuit and the absence of ‘soft tommy’ (bread).
1850		(con. 1843) Melville White-Jacket (1990) 133: Hence the various sea-rolls, made dishes, and Mediterranean pies, well known by man-of-war’s-men — Scouse, Lob-Scouse, Soft-Tack, Soft-Tommy, [...] and lastly, and least known, Dunderfunk.
1853		G.J. Whyte-Melville Digby Grand (1890) 29: That jovial personage [...] promises Spooner ‘soft tommy’ when he gets to Quebec.
1864, 1867, 1870		Hotten Sl. Dict. 240: Soft-tommy loaf-bread, in contradistinction to hard biscuit.
1865		Potter Jrnl & News (Coudersport, PA) 19 Apr. 1/5: We East India goers [...] called everything that was not hard tack soft tommy.
1878		W.S. Gilbert H.M.S. Pinafore 3: I’ve treacle and toffee, and excellent coffee, / Soft tommy, and succulent chops.
1889		Argonia Clipper (KS) 7 Dec. 6/5: Ordinary loaves of white bread [...] are christened ‘soft tack,’ or ‘soft tommy’.
1895		Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 78: Soft Tommy, bread.

bread, beer and tobacco.

1909

J. Ware Passing Eng. of the Victorian Era.

that’s right!

1902

H. Baumann Londinismen (2nd edn).