There are a few mentions of “Old Tom Gin” in HD's Google
search, but not many. A few readers here recognize Old Tom as being a style of gin, distinct and separate from Jenever and London Dry styles. Pot distilled Dutch Jenever (or Genever) was the first gin – distilled twice and loaded with juniper to mask its raw taste. Later the name Old Tom was applied to sweetened English imitations of Jenever. Then much later, after the invention of the Coffee still, a style of gin known as London Dry became popular in the 1870's. In terms of sales the sweetened and spiced up Old Tom would remain the most popular style of gin up until the 1920s. By the 1940s the Old Tom style faded away though, Borrough's “Beefeater” being the last big distillery to bottle it.
This picture above is a snapshot taken after a
fight scene, from the 2009 movie Sherlock Holmes. Notice the barrel on the top shelf labeled “Old Tom”. The settings of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories are centered between the Victorian and Edwardian eras (roughly 1880 to 1914) so some of the movie props like that hogshead, could be period accurate. But the association of Old Tom with gin is much older than that.
While Dutch Genever was imported to London during the early 17th century it was rare and expensive because of a high duty tax. The situation changed about 1689 when (Catholic) James II was deposed and William of Orange (Dutch, Protestant and married to James II's daughter – Mary) took over. The change effectively dropped high taxation on trade goods from Protestant countries like Holland, but raised taxes on goods from Catholic countries like Spain and France. So now the working public could not afford French brandy but they could afford Genever.
It didn't take long for enterprising individuals in England to begin distilling cheap imitations of Genever. But this new English spirit was rough and rasty and was made by anyone, even the unscrupulous. Mostly everyone spiced and sweetened their crude gin spirits, to make them more palatable. This gin was cheaper than beer, almost dirt cheap, and set off an epidemic of public intoxication and alcohol poisonings in Britain called the “Gin Craze”. This
cartoon or etching is still famous now but it literally swayed public opinion back then. Parliament passed several acts to reduce the effects of the pestiferous alcoholism among the poor and working class. The 1736 Gin Act was one such legislation that was intended remove cheap gin by heavily taxing the small producers and sellers. It was in this environment that the most popular story of how the name “Old Tom” became attached to gin, was hatched.
In this version an Irish soldier (in London) came up with a novel way to vend shots of cheap illicit gin to pedestrians on the street. In an atmosphere where authorities and their informers were cracking down on gin sales, he is said to have purchased a wooden sign of a cat, (taken from a pub perhaps) and then mounted it to a door of a house. Supposedly a client just walked up to the door (and knocked maybe) and put a coin into a slot hidden in the cat's mouth. Behind the locked door another person would pour a shot of gin into a funnel and pipe that led back through the door and emptied into the customer's cup.
http://www.the-complete-gentleman.com/S ... omGin.html
https://www.iceandaslice.co.uk/blogs/ne ... -originate
https://metro.co.uk/2016/12/15/old-tom- ... t-6251423/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gin_Craze
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Hogarth
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_Street_and_Gin_Lane
