Green’s Dictionary of Slang

rumbustious, lacking in respectability.

1825		N.-Y. Eve. Post 3 June 2/1: They are said to be journeymen and apprentice masons, who were out on a Tom-and-Jerry frolic, and who were heard to boast this morning, that they gave the plebians a hammering last night.
1826		N.-Y. National Advocate 19 Jan. 2/4: Eight or ten ruffians came over the river into Trenton from Pennsylvania, on a ‘Tom and Jerry’ frolic. They went into a tavern, milled the landlord, broke the windows of a house.
1826		W.N. Glascock Naval Sketchbk I 127: These endearing appellations remind one rather of the ‘Tom and Jerry’ trash at the Adelphi, than the tone of a tyrant.
1828		Australian (Sydney) 29 Feb. 2/3: One feature in The Australian is a great drawback [...] we allude to the ‘Tom and Jerry’ slang of the Police Reports.
1843		R.S. Surtees Handley Cross (1854) 140: The Tom-and-Jerry fox-’unter wot goes out now and then to smoke cigars, [...] and be able to talk of the ’ounds.
1853		R.S. Surtees Mr Sponge’s Sporting Tour 187: Telling how Deuceace and he floored a Charley, or Blueun and he pitched a snob out of the boxes into the pit. This was in the old Tom-and-Jerry days, when fisticuffs were the fashion.
[1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 15 Aug. 9/1: The tale of this ‘loot’ caught the ear / Of one of social rank; / He kept a ledger – mum’s the word! – In the Tom and Jerry Bank].