Green’s Dictionary of Slang

a waiter, one who pours wine; cite 1890 suggests a generous host thus skink v.

c.1580		‘I.T.’ Grim The Collier of Croydon II i: Here’s some Cheer toward; I must be Skinker then.
1619		Rowlands Well met Gossip A3: Content (say I) nay Besse Ile be thy skinker.
1622		Massinger Virgin-Martyr II i: This Bacchus who is head warden of Vintners’ Hall [...] This boon Bacchanalian skinker, did I make legs to?
1635		H. Glapthorne Hollander IV i: Sir Pithagoras we doe create you skinker [...] you shall dible in liquor of account.
1638		R. Brathwait Barnabees Journal II K7: Thence to Dunstable, [...] No feare affrights deep drinkers, / There I tost it with my Skinkers.
1652		Mercurius Democritus 27 Oct. - 3 Nov. 235: Bench-whister to all Skinkers, Lick-thimbles, Down-right Drunkards, Petty Drunkards, Roaring Boys, Swaggerers, Pot and Half-Pot men, Short-winded Glass-men, Master of the Horse called cut.
c.1698		B.E. Dict. Canting Crew n.p.: Skinker that fills the Glass or Cup. Who Skinks? who pours out the Liquor.
1725		New Canting Dict. [as cit. c.1698].
1737, 1759, 1760, 1776		Bailey Universal Etym. Eng. Dict. [as cit. c.1698].
1817		Sir W. Scott Rob Roy (1883) 86: I give my vote and interest to Jonathan Brown, our landlord, to be King and Prince of Skinkers, conditionally that he fetches us another bottle.
1821		Sir W. Scott Kenilworth II 142: Here comes the wine – Fill round, master Skinker.
1850		E.V. Kenealy Goethe: a New Pantomime 143: Welcome, then, the flagon skinker.
1859		Matsell Vocabulum 80: skink A waiter.
1870		Islington Gaz. 12 July 3/3: Vulcan [...] acting as skinker [...] does not forget to dip his own nose in bowl.
1873		Graphic (London) 28 June 9/2: He who drew the wine was a ‘skinker’.
1890		Westmorland Gaz. 14 June 3/3: He is the prince of skinkers [...] not a stingy hypocritical devil like old Turpenny Skinflint that drinks drunk on other folk’s cost.
1904		Sunderland Dly Echo 7 Oct. 3/3: Shakespeare calls one of his serving-men a ‘skinker’.
1911		Eve. Teleg. (Dundee) 6 June 2/2: ‘Why ,John, [...] You have been reading Geneva print this morning already.’ ‘I have been reading the Litany,’ said John with a look of drunken gravity [...] ‘I am an old soldier, sir, I thank heaven (hiccup.’ ‘An old skinker, you mean John’.