trimmings, n. — Green’s Dictionary of Slang

trimmings n.

[a period when shops (as opposed to ‘sinful’ public houses) were allowed to sell alcohol. Shopkeepers, typically drapers and silk-merchants, thus itemized as ‘trimmings’ the drinks their female customers consumed, on the bills that were sent to their husbands]

secretly drunk alcohol, usu. consumed by a woman.

1897		Daily Tel. 18 Jan. in Ware (1909) 250/1: The Drapers’ World declares ‘alcoholic trimmings’ to be fiction.
1909		J. Ware Passing Eng. of the Victorian Era 250/1: Trimmings (Trade, 1897). Masked alcohol. When, by the contrivance of Mr Gladstone, it was attempted to modify the attraction of the public home by giving licenses to sell alcoholic drinks to various tradesmen, some linen-drapers and silk-mercers who gave credit, opened liberal refreshment rooms at their establishments, and put down their lady-customers’ wine-lunches as ‘trimmings’ in the bills sent to the husbands. Hence the word became synonymous with secret drinking by women.
1949		R. Park Poor Man’s Orange 153: He’ll bring up his liver and all its trimmin’s in a moment [...] He’s drunk.