Green’s Dictionary of Slang

jacky n.¹

gin.

1800		Sporting Mag. Apr. XVI 26/1: Got up at eight o’clock – had a drop of Jackey.
1812		J. Bell Jr. (ed.) Rhymes of Northern Bards 89: Ye’d best hev a drop o’ wour jackey. Your jackey! says I, now what’s that? [...] English gin, canny man, that’s flat.
1820		Jack Randall’s Diary 64: Where jacky’s drank until the senses reel.
1821		Egan Life in London (1869) 111: The latter in smacking her lips, talks of her prime jackey, an out-and-out concern, and a bit of good truth.
1828		Lytton Pelham III 268: Suppose Bess were to address you thus: ‘Well you parish bull prig, are you for lushing jackey, or pattering in the hum box?’.
1829		‘The Soho Bazaar’ in C. Hindley James Catnach (1878) 194: A quartern of Hodges’s jacky.
1832		Egan Bk of Sports 70: [note] The hoarse Cyprian owes her existence to copious draughts of ‘Jacky’.
1837		‘Love in the City’ in Bentley’s Misc. Aug. 128: Lass! some more jacky!
1837		‘The Rambling Sons of Night’ in Rum Ti Tum! in Spedding & Watt (eds) Bawdy Songbooks (2011) III 160: Well prim’d with Jack, or old Tom’s juice.
1838		R. Nicholson Cockney Adventures 6 Jan. 75: The first stop the happy party made, was at Ewell, to refresh the horses, and to take a drop of jackey.
1846		Bell’s Life in Sydney 18 July 2/6: The luckless Quean rewarded the exploit with a go of jackey and became elevated.
1853		Dickens ‘Slang’ in Household Words 24 Sept. 75/2: For one article of drink, gin, we have [...] duke, jackey, tape, blue-ruin, cream of the valley, white satin, old Tom.
1859		‘Scene in a London Flash-Panny’ Matsell Vocabulum 100: Come, Bell, let us track the dancers and rumble the flats, for I’m tired of pattering flash and lushing jackey.
1859		G.A. Sala Gaslight and Daylight 263: The stuff itself, which in the western gin-shops goes generally by the name of ‘blue-ruin’ or ‘short,’ is here called indifferently, ‘tape,’ ‘max,’ ‘duke,’ ‘gatter,’ and ‘jacky.’.
1862		E. de la Bédollière Londres et les Anglais 315/2: jackey, du genièvre.
1878		W.S. Gilbert H.M.S. Pinafore 3: I’ve snuff, and tobaccy and excellent jacky.
1880		R. Rowe Picked Up in the Streets 229: It beats me, it do, how they can take to Jacky.
1921		A.C. Inman 21 June diary in Aaron (1985) 188: About prohibition. I have seen more drunks around the streets than before. They get drunk on jackey [...] a fellow Eddie knew stopped us. ‘I’ll give you a “ball” for a smoke. Got a fine bottle of gin. Have one on me.’ Some joke, prohibition.

In compounds

jacky-shop (n.)

a tavern selling gin.

1833

‘She Svears Ven I Have Caned Her’ in Funny Songster in Spedding & Watt (eds) Bawdy Songbooks (2011) III 40: I search’d a vell-known Jacky-shop / And that vith mighty fear; / And drinking vith a scavenger, / By gosh I found her there!