The prototypical British soldier, probably originating in a War Office publication of 1815 showing how the Soldier's Book for the cavalry should be filled up, giving Pte Thomas Atkins, No. 6 Troop, 6th Dragoons, as its example. In an 1837 edition Atkins was a sergeant, and was able to sign his name rather than make his mark. It has been suggested that the Duke of Wellington chose the name to commemorate a soldier in his battalion of the 33rd Regiment, killed in Flanders in 1794.
The nickname was widely used in the 1880s, and in 1883 the Illustrated London News depicted ‘Pte Tommy Atkins returning from Indian Service’. Rudyard Kipling's poem ‘Tommy’ summed up Britain's ambivalence about those who defended her:
Then it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that
An' ‘Tommy, 'ow's your soul?’
But it's ‘Thin red line of 'eroes’
When the drums begin to roll.
The term was in general use in WW I, and spawned derivatives like ‘Tommy cooker’, a small portable stove—or, in rare German humour, the WW II Sherman tank, well known for its inflammable qualities. It is not now used, although British officers sometimes hark back to it when speaking of their men as ‘Toms’.
— Richard Holmes
